Toulouse (;
locally: ; , ) is the capital city of the southwestern French
department of
Haute-Garonne, as well as of the
Midi-Pyrénées region. It lies on the banks of the
River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean, and from Paris. With 1,250,251 inhabitants at the January 2011 census, the Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in France, after
Paris (12.3 million),
Lyon (2.2 million), and
Marseille (1.7 million).