This map, drawn up by Bernard Sirven based on Hector Labouche’s town plan, was published in La Dépêche du Midi days after the 1875 floods caused by the Garonne River as it flowed through Toulouse.

The flooding of the Garonne, which took place on 23 and 24 June 1875, is the most significant in the history of Toulouse. The river rose to 8.32 metres above its normal level and its flow exceeded 8,000 cubic metres per second, creating such pressure that the Saint-Pierre and Saint-Michel bridges collapsed. Only the Pont-Neuf remained standing, thanks to its side drains and the asymmetry of its piers. The toll in Toulouse was 209 dead, 1,400 houses destroyed and 25,000 people left homeless.

The map depicts this disaster using two overlapping coloured layers on top of Labouche’s town plan. The area submerged by the rising river is shown in blue, whilst all the collapsed buildings are shown in red. It is clearly evident how the rising waters of the Garonne inundated the western bank of the river on a massive scale, leaving the entire neighbourhood of Saint-Cyprien under water – a fishing and working-class neighbourhood with a population of around 25,000, whose houses had been built using poor-quality materials. The historic centre, situated on higher ground and protected by stone walls, appears uncoloured and with no buildings marked in red.

The money raised from the sale of this map went to the victims, meaning that the map served a dual purpose: providing information on the extent of the disaster and acting as part of a charity fundraising effort.

Sources

• Maps of Toulouse from 1860 to 1950