Toulouse is an animated city: with more than four hundred thousand occupants and three major universities, it is always in motion. Like any city, it is more than its buildings, streets, and metro system. It has a personality. Native Toulousains know this, and over the centuries they have adorned its walls and parks with faces, as if to give body to their home city's personality.
Toulouse takes on the faces of Greek deities and of the great writers and architects it has nurtured. Other statues remember the suffering and deaths of Toulouse's soldiers. The face of the lady of the République Française marks Toulouse as part of a larger nation, and the figure of Jesus on the cross shows that it is part of a larger religious culture. Nor does the city forget its intellectual and artistic culture: the faces of thinkers and artists from all over France make an appearance. Some figures represent Toulouse's geographical wealth: the rivers Ariège and Garonne adorn the walls of Toulouse in the forms of women. Other statues have less symbolic meaning, but express various attitudes that crop up in Toulouse's life.
All of these photos were taken from the street.
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