Toulon, the major naval center on France's Mediterranean coast, is a city in southern France and a large military harbour on the Mediterranean coast, with a major French naval base. The population of the city in 2005 was 167,400 making Toulon the fifteenth largest city in France. The population of the Toulon metropolitan area in 1999 was 564,823, making Toulon the tenth largest metropolitan area, after Strasbourg, in France.

Toulon is an important centre for naval construction, fishing, wine making, and the manufacture of aeronautical equipment, armaments, maps, paper, tobacco, printing, shoes, and electronic equipment.

Toulon has never been a particularly pleasant place. Half destroyed in the last war, the city is dominated by the military and associated industries.

Today, the museums are dull, motorway traffic crawls through the centre, and Toulon has all the paranoia of a big city but with few of the charms. The only positive in recent years has been the National Front losing control of the Town Hall in March 2001, which had previously relegated French nationals of non-European origin to second-class status.

The main museums are the Museum of the French Navy, the Museum of Old Toulon and its Region, the Museum of Asian Arts, the Museum of Art, the Memorial Museum to the Landings in Provence, and the Museum of Natural History of Toulon.