The short tour of Albi

For a real idea of just how small the French artist Toulouse-Lautrec was, you need to stand against the same place where generations of his family drew themselves up to be measured. Scores of pencil marks, each bearing a name, mark a wall inside the ancestral family home of the Château du Bosc in Aveyron, part of France's deep south-west.

'We've shown his mark so much over the years that we've made a hole in the wall,' says Nicole Tapié de Celeyran, granddaughter of Toulouse-Lautrec's cousin Raoul. She points to the place where the artist reached his full height of 4ft 11in, well below the lines for his father and grandfather. The victim of a congenital bone disease, who broke both his legs in childhood, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec simply stopped growing.

You can't help noticing that the stooped, 78-year-old woman who now lives in the château barely comes up to her famous ancestor's mark herself. Hers was obviously a small family; at 5ft 7in, I am close to the highest mark, belonging to the artist's cousin Gabriel.

Madame Tapié de Celeyran seems blissfully ignorant of Moulin Rouge, the film about her famous relative starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, which comes out on September 7 to mark the centenary of his death. So it's not really surprising when she admits that the Château du Bosc, which is charmingly ill-equipped for tourism with no car park or tea room, has no special events planned for that time.

This is the artist's childhood home, from his birth in 1864 in the nearby town of Albi to his move to Paris 18 years later, and it's these early years that are his descendant's speciality. She dishes out the family's memories to visitors who turn up at the rambling, slightly decayed country château in the middle of the countryside and summon her by following the instructions in the courtyard to 'ring the bell very, very loudly'.

'Look, here's a photograph of him with my grandmother. She told me he was always happy, never complaining about his accidents,' she said, pointing out one of the few pictures of the bearded Toulouse-Lautrec without his hat.

In the dining room, she tells of his cooking exploits, which led him to publish a recipe book with a friend. And in the heavily tapestried sitting room, she points out the fire where the young Toulouse-Lautrec stole coal for drawing when his pencil was taken away at bedtime. His bedroom is next door, rather than upstairs, because he couldn't climb stairs easily.

The only originals of the artist's work are sketched on to bricks on either side of the French doors in the orangery. To see his other paintings, I headed into Albi, some 25 miles south, where the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, housed in the beautiful thirteenth-century archbishop's palace, holds the largest collection of the artist's works.

Best known for his lithographs, Toulouse-Lautrec has been heralded as the father of modern advertising. Each of his 31 posters are in the museum - La Goulue, the star Moulin Rouge dancer; songwriter Aristide Bruant with red scarf and hat; and the famous dancer, Jane Avril.

Here, too, are his paintings of prostitutes and Parisian life crafted in Montmartre where he would sit at a seedy nightclub table, drinking and sketching. One woman, Yvette Guilbert, who wore trademark long, black gloves, was flattered at the idea of being portrayed by Lautrec until she saw how ugly he had made her look. The artist apologised by crafting a ceramic of her, which is in the museum along with the painting. He later showed his sense of humour by including her in a poster, but only from the neck down.

The early work of Lautrec shows how he painted his way to greatness, often using cardboard on which he would capture an image with a few brushstrokes. By contrast, his later work is dark and sombre, perhaps reflecting the fact that at the end of a short life characterised by too many women and far too much absinthe, his family sent him to a mental hospital to dry out. The strategy failed - a friend visited and filled up his walking stick which was hollowed out to hold alcohol and a miniature glass - and Toulouse-Lautrec died two years later, aged 37. The cane and the 39 circus works he painted at this time are in the museum.

The centenary of his death isn't something the town of Albi is cashing in on. Next door, at the tourist information office, no one has any idea of special festivities. And though their own literature states that half a dozen restaurants in town offer meals from the artist's recipe book, they can't say which ones. The lack of information is dismissed with a Gallic shrug.

But then Albi doesn't need to promote itself. Even driving in the surrounding countryside - filled with sunflowers and grape vines and peppered with quaint fortified towns dating from the Middle Ages - makes you feel you're driving through a painting.

In the middle of all this, Albi rises up from the banks of the River Tarn like a true masterpiece. Built from red bricks, it wouldn't look out of place in Tuscany.

What really draws the eye is the fortress of a cathedral, brick-built with elongated, narrow windows, its only exterior ornamentation an intricate stone canopy tacked on to the main building centuries later. The heavily ornate interior comes as quite a surprise.

Even if you're not interested in art, it's worth going into the palace-turned-museum to get the best viewpoint over the ornate garden and the river. Green trees overhang the river, topped by slate-roofed houses with long shuttered windows.

It was reluctantly that I left a few hours later to wind my way through Albi's maze of cobbled streets to the Lautrec restaurant, which serves meals in the former stables of the Lautrec family's house. Could this be one of the restaurants offering the artist's own recipes? No, the manager shrugged, almost horrified that its traditional French menu would need any such marketing ploy. A glass of their speciality red wine mixed with spices and honey in my hand, I was inclined to agree.

Across the narrow street, I could see the house where Toulouse-Lautrec was born. Marked by a simple white plaque, the wooden door stays firmly closed to the public. There are no postcard shops or ice-cream stalls in the quiet street. Close by, though, a clothes shop has made a single concession to its important location - a handful of tea towels for sale outside bear Toulouse-Lautrec motifs.

Fact file

How to get there: flights with Air France (0845 0845 111) from Heathrow to Toulouse or British Airways (0845 773 3377) from Gatwick to Toulouse take about 90 minutes, with prices starting at £78 plus tax. Albi is about an hour's drive from Toulouse.

Where to stay: the thirteenth-century Château de Salettes (00 33 563 336060) once belonged to the Toulouse-Lautrec family and has rooms decorated in minimalist style for £75. On 14 September, it will host a Toulouse-Lautrec evening with Moulin Rouge dancing and the artist's favourite food and drink.

Down the road, the scenic Château de Mauriac (0033 563 417118), owned by the artist Bistes, rents rooms to 'honest-looking people who turn up' for £100-£150 a night. It sounds steep, but the period-decorated rooms are stunning; in the Chinese room, you sleep in a genuine Ming bed and scrub up in a sunken bath in the tower.

Pleasant gîtes can be found in the picturesque hamlet of Les Estenes at Franck Popelier's (0033 563 815038), with weekly prices from £180 for two adults and a child in September. Bertel Ohlsen's one-bed gîte costs £200 a week in September (0033 563 815027). Hotel Mercure Les Bastides in Albi (0033 563 476666) has a wonderful view over the river. B&B is £23 per person.

Further information: France Information Line (09068 244123 at 60p a minute) or at www.franceguide.com