Albi, France
View of the Tarn river in Albi
About Albi
Albi is in the Tarn department of the Midi-Pyrenees region.
The capital of Albi is renowned for the beautiful red brick cathedral Sainte Cecile which towers above the river Tarn.
The Southern city of Albi is the capital of the Tarn department in the Occitanie region. It is close to Béziers, Castres, Toulouse, Montauban and Rodez.
The capital of Albi is renowned for the beautiful red brick cathedral of Sainte-Cécile which towers above the river Tarn. With little less than 50,000 inhabitants called Albigeois and Albigeoises, Albi makes for an agreeable shopping city thanks to its many pedestrian cobbled streets surrounded by old half-timbered buildings.
Humans have lived where Albi is located since prehistoric times because of the river Tarn. It gradually became a city and by the Middle-Ages, Albi was an important religious centre, also home to Cathars (the crusade aimed to end Catharism is called the Albigensian crusade). As such, Albi has an important religious and architectural legacy and visitors can admire the Sainte-Cécile cathedral or the collegiate church of Saint-Salvi.
Albi is also the birth place of famous people such as painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec or the admiral and explorer Jean-François de Galaup count of La Pérouse, often referred to as the French James Cook. Both men are symbols of Albi and have their own museum in the city.
