Toulouse in standard French, and in the local French accent) is a city in southwest France on the banks of the River Garonne, 730 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. With 1,133,000 inhabitants in 2008, the Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in France. Toulouse is one of the centres of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, and CNES’s Toulouse Space Centre (CST), the largest space center in Europe. Thales Alenia Space, Europe's largest satellite manufacturer, and EADS Astrium Satellites, EADS's satellite system subsidiary, also have a significant presence in Toulouse. Its world renowned university is one of the oldest in Europe (founded in 1229) and, with more than 120,000 students, is the second largest university campus of France after Paris and in front of Lyon. Toulouse was the capital of the former province of Languedoc (provinces were abolished during the French Revolution). It is now the capital of the Midi-Pyranees region, the largest region in metropolitan France. It is also the capital of the Haute-Garonne department. Toulouse is an old and ornate city in France with a long and rich history. The population of the city proper was 390,350 (as of the 1999 census), with 964,797 inhabitants in the metropolitan area (French: aire urbaine) (as of 1999 census). As of 1 January 2005 estimate, the population of the city proper reached 435,000 inhabitants, which means a record 1.9% population growth per year between 1999 and 2005 for the city proper. Toulouse is the fourth largest city in France, after Paris, Marseille and Lyon. In 1999 Toulouse was the fifth largest metropolitan area in France, after Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Lille. Fueled by booming aerospace and high-tech industries, population growth of 1.5% a year in the metropolitan area in the 1990s (compared with a sluggish 0.37% for metropolitan France), and a ...