Cité de l’Espace – Space city in Toulouse

During my stay in southern France last October while driving towards the beautiful city of Toulouse with simple intention of walking around and seeing what is worth to see, I caught a sight of an erected rocket! Amazingly, none of my French friends seemed to remember the existence of what turned out to be the biggest and most impressive science park of the region, Cité de l’Espace (the Space City).

The enormous park lies at the edge of the biggest city and the capital of the Midi-Pyrenean region bordering Spain, the wonderful Toulouse or La Ville Rose (the Pink City). This is the biggest county and Toulouse is the second biggest university city of France with the Toulouse University founded in 1229. Here is also the birthplace of the magnificent Concorde airplane, one of the centres of CNES (The French Space Agency) and important city of electronics, aviation and space sciences.

Cité de l’Espace is easily approachable and seen even from a distance as the Ariane 5 rocket standing tall against the amazingly clear and blue sky draws the attention (pict.1). After purchasing the ticket (about 13 Euro) in a spacious picturesque hall we were directed towards the main exhibition area, a labyrinth like hall of four (or more) levels. And the top floor houses the planetarium.

The admission hall is followed by a small room with satellites hanging in their real time positions above Earth, further inside communication and weather satellites, a complete standing spacesuit and a huge horizontal panel simulating the view of the Earth from orbit welcome us (pict.2). Stairs in the middle of the building connect the floors, if going half level up you walk right into the space shuttle’s cargo bay or you can watch the day’s feature story on a huge screen and read or listen to other astronomical facts and discoveries in many languages.

The inner exhibition in the main building is huge and walking around has to be organized, otherwise you can easily miss out the Moonstone exhibited close to the Shuttle but hidden in the labyrinth-like place behind. There is a terrace somewhere between the first and the third floor with a beautiful view of the outside park and the nearby city.

Outside complete modules, scientific satellites, a Soyuz capsule, “space telescopes” and bits and pieces of stages of different space vehicles are scattered all over the park with the erected Ariane 5 rocket (of the ESA and CNES) in the middle (pict.3). The exhibition in the adjacent building is dedicated to the European space research, a big screen with running programs, smaller models of previous Ariane launchers in a circle, parts of engines standing all over the place and much more.

The complete magnificent Mir station stands between the Solar System’s big model and the Le Terr@dome (Dome of the Earth). Modules are accessible and anyone can check out the living spaces and control boards and experience in real (no weightlessness though) what the life on the now gone old station could have been. Do not be surprised by seeing couple of “Russian kozmonauts” hanging in the modules (pict.4).

Out in the beautiful green park refreshments can be purchased in a nearby “espresso” and if tired of too much information and walking, even lie down on the grass and sleep for a while to recharge for the next part of the tour.

And that is the Le Terr@dome, a huge half globe standing in the far side of the park with all we need to know about the history of our mother Earth, its biosphere and catastrophes that formed our presence (pict.5).

After this long and eventful day there was not much time left for the originally planned tour of Toulouse. We decided therefore to relax and enjoy the rest of the day in a nice restaurant and while sitting outside plans were made for the next day’s visit of the city. Another unforgettable event indeed…