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Lille is the main city of the Hauts-de-France region, and as an urban area it is France’s fourth largest. It is also a city with fine sights, exciting museums and a large number of cafés and restaurants that are worth traveling here for.
Lovely walks await in Lille, where you can enjoy a city center with beautiful buildings. Place du Général-de-Gaulle is the right place to start, and here you can see the Vielle Bourse. Within comfortable walking distance, you can see the city’s churches, with the cathedral at the head, and the city’s town hall with its 104 meter high tower.
Lille is also a city with many museums. The Palais des Beaux-Arts is the city’s and one of France’s leading art museums with works by countless masters from different times and countries. Another museum is the one located in Charles de Gaulle’s birthplace, where part of France’s history is described.
The area around Lille is characterized by exciting cities and a lot of military history, which both counts the time with the great buildings of the engineer Vauban and the bloody battles of the First World War. You can visit memorial monuments in several places, and you can also easily get to many Belgian and French cities of culture.
Place du Général-de-Gaulle is the large historic market square in Lille. Also known as the Grand Place, it is named after General Charles de Gaulle, who was born in Lille in 1890 and became the first president of the Fifth Republic of France.
This area of Lille was part of the course of the River Deûle and surrounding wetlands up to the 13th century. With the construction of canals, the current square area was drained in 1271, and soon after the newly acquired land was used for trade, and a market emerged, which was formalized in the following century.
Today, the square is popular among tourists and citizens of Lille, and there are several buildings worth seeing around the square. Here you can see, among other things, Lille’s old stock exchange, Vielle Bourse, and on the square stands the monument Colonne de la Déesse, which was erected 1842-1845 as a reminder of the Austrian siege of the city in 1792.
The many houses around Place du Général-de-Gaulle represent Lille’s architecture from the 17th century to the 20th century. The Vielle Bourse is the oldest and it stands in the Flemish Renaissance. Among the more recent constructions is La Voix du Nord, a gabled house from 1936, which was built by the newspaper Grand Écho du Nord.
Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille is Lille’s cathedral and a relatively new church, built in the years 1854-1999 in Neo-Gothic architecture. The church was built for a miraculous figure of the Virgin Mary that stood for centuries in a church that was destroyed during the French Revolution.
In doing so, the current cathedral was to replace the destroyed Collégiale Saint-Pierre de Lille, but it was also to establish the growing city as a bishop’s seat. In connection with the industrial revolution of the 19th century, the growth in Lille’s population and economy was significant, and a bishop’s seat was to establish the city as a religious center alongside an industrial one.
The foundation stone was laid in 1854, and after an architectural competition, the local architect Charles Leroy was put in charge of the construction. He was chosen after an opt-out of the competition’s two selected projects, both of which were English. They ended up not wanting to let Anglicans build the Catholic cathedral.
Construction lasted until 1999 after several periods of various construction. In 1999, the church was finished with the construction of the modern facade, which stands in interesting contrast to the otherwise neo-gothic 19th-century design. In the church you can experience a beautiful and classic Gothic interior with fine glass mosaics.
The Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille is a distinguished art museum in Lille, which houses one of France’s largest collections. It is also one of France’s oldest museums, as it was Napoleon who initiated the opening in 1809 as part of the popularization of the French art treasures.
In 1801, Lille had been selected as one of 15 French cities to receive works from places in Europe where French armies had captured works. The museum initially opened its doors in a former church, and later the collection was moved to the city’s town hall.
The current museum building was built for the purpose from 1885 to 1892. It was the Parisian architects Edouard Bérard and Fernand Etienne-Charles Delmas who designed and were responsible for the construction of the neo-baroque building that housed the museum, which had previously housed the collections of Jean-Baptiste Wicar as part of the art museum.
Today, you can enjoy countless works of art, not least spanning paintings and sculptures from the 15th-19th centuries. For example, you can see works by Raphael, Donatello, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Goya, El Greco, Toulouse-Lautrec, Delacroix, Rubens and Rodin.
Hôtel de Ville de Lille is the large and well-known town hall building of the city of Lille. The town hall was built from 1924 to 1932 in an Art Deco version of Flemish Neo-Renaissance. The building replaced Lille’s former town hall from the mid-19th century, which had perished during a fire in 1916.
It was decided not to rebuild the burnt down town hall, but instead to build a new one as a mark of a new era for the town. The design was entrusted to the architect Émile Dubuisson after a published competition. The town hall was built a little south of the center in a working and industrial area that symbolized the growth that Lille had experienced.
Roger Salengro became mayor of Lille in 1925, and he decided that the town hall should also have a bell tower. The tower was inaugurated in 1932 with a height of 104 metres, making Lille’s town hall the tallest in France. The tower has since been included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List, along with other towers in Belgium and France, as symbols of the power of city governments in the region.
Today you can see the beautiful town hall, which architecturally offers many fine details, which you rarely see due to the special combination of Art Deco and the Flemish Renaissance. This applies to the exterior and also in the halls of the building. You can also climb the town hall tower, from which there is a fantastic view of the city.
Porte de Paris is the name of one of the city gates that used to be located in Lille’s historic city walls. The Porte de Paris was built as a city gate in the years 1685-1692, and it happened as a symbol of Lille’s entry into France.
The site where the Porte de Paris was built was where King Louis XIV passed in 1667 to receive the key to the city. The following year, Lille became French after the Peace of Aachen. Louis XIV appointed Simon Vollant to replace the then Porte des Malades with the current and imposing city gate.
Vielle Bourse is Lille’s old trade exchange, which was built in 1652-1653 with permission from the Spanish king. At the opening, there were 24 traders who were given stalls in the building, which is located between the Grand Place and the Place du Théâtre as one of Lille’s well-known and beautiful landmarks today.
The fine building was erected in a magnificent building that could compare with similar places in competing cities such as Antwerp. Today you can enjoy the building’s exterior and also the fine arcades in the stock exchange’s inner courtyard, to which there are four entrances. Previously there was a statue of Napoleon in the middle of the courtyard.
Maison Natale Charles de Gaulle is the place where de Gaulle was born in 1890. The house in Rue Princesse was then owned by the later president’s maternal grandparents.
Since 1983, the house has been set up as a museum, where you can see effects from Charles de Gaulle’s life and a typical interior from the industrial middle class of the 19th century.
Citadelle is Lille’s large and well-preserved citadel, which was built 1667-1670. It was the military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban who designed the citadel, which is considered perhaps the finest of Vauban’s many contemporary military installations. It was built as part of a defensive belt along France’s northeastern border.
The citadel has the five bastions of Anjou, La Reine, Turenne, Le Dauphin and Le Roi, and there were watchtowers along the outer walls. The entrances to the central part of the citadel were via the gates Porte Royale to the east and Porte Dauphine to the west.
In the citadel itself, the facility’s buildings are arranged around the pentagonal armory, the Place d’Armes. The citadel’s church was built here, just as the commander’s and governor’s buildings, officer’s buildings, barracks, arsenal and powder depot were built as the most important facilities.
The Chambre de Commerce de Lille is a chamber of commerce founded in 1701 and established in Lille in 1715 after the return of French Flanders to France with the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. By the end of the 19th century, activities had grown and the chamber of commerce wanted to gather in one place where there was also room for a museum.
The solution was the construction of the current Flemish Renaissance building, which stands with its bell tower as one of Lille’s best-known buildings. It was the architect Louis Marie Cordonnier who was given the task of designing the building, and after several adjustments, construction began in 1909, and the house was completed in 1921.
The most characteristic feature of the beautiful building is the 76 meter high tower. The decoration of the Chamber of Commerce drew inspiration from famous Dutch town halls and the style that prevailed in Lille in past centuries. The most distinguished floor in the building is the 25×25 meter Hall d’Honneur, which is topped with a large dome.
Église Saint-Maurice is a large parish church that was built in Lille over several centuries. Part of the church dates to the 14th century, while the choir, side chapels and an extension of the nave were completed in the 15th century.
Additions were made and extended until the 19th century, when Église Saint-Maurice was intended to be given the status of Lille’s cathedral, but this did not happen. The striking bell tower was built 1867-1877.
There are many works of art and decorations on and in the church worth seeing, such as statues and beautiful stained glass windows. It was Charles Gaudelet who produced the mosaics that were installed in the church between 1859 and 1861.
Hospice Comtesse Museum is a museum in Lille, housed in a former hospital founded in 1237 by Jeanne de Flandre. The old hospital burned down in 1468, and the site was rebuilt in the following years, and expansion took place until the 18th century, from which you can also see a lot of the interior.
Hospice Comtesse was converted into a museum in 1962, and the name is Musée d’Art et d’Histoire. At the museum you can experience the social and cultural life in Lille throughout the 1600s and 1700s. There are also rooms and exhibitions where other themes, contemporary works and so on are presented.
Jardin des Plantes is a municipal botanical garden in Lille. The garden was established in 1948 as a successor to other botanical gardens whose history started with the first establishment in 1596. The garden is one of three botanical gardens in the city. The others are Jardin botanique de la Faculté de Pharmacie and Jardin botanique Nicolas Boulay.
In the Jardin des Plantes you can experience fine plants and many plants, which are grouped according to their families. There is also an orangery in the garden, where Mediterranean plants grow, and you can also visit the garden’s tropical greenhouse with, among other things, banana palms and coffee plants. A rose garden has also been planted here, and you can also see a beautiful collection of dahlias among the many growths.
Les Tulipes de Shangri-La is the name of a beautiful work of art consisting of brightly colored tulips that stands in Lille’s cityscape. You can see the tulips on the Esplanade François-Mitterand.
The artwork was created by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. It is seven meters high and was erected in connection with Lille’s status as European Capital of Culture in 2004.
Opéra de Lille is an opera house that was built in period architecture from the belle époque era in the years 1907-1913. However, the opera tradition in the city dates back to a short time after Lille became French in 1668. At that time, productions were carried out in the city’s town hall.
An opera house was built in 1785-1788, but it burned down in 1903, and so a new opera house was decided upon, which Louis Marie Cordonnier was chosen to design after a competition. Inside the building you can see lavishly decorated halls, staircases and the opera’s foyer.
Roubaix is a city known for its architectural heritage and for the growth during the economic boom the city experienced during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. Back then and until the beginning of the 20th century, Roubaix was one of the most important cities for the growing and important textile industry.
Today, Roubaix, located immediately northeast of Lille, is a city with several attractions and a contrast to the somewhat larger neighboring city. Among other things, you can see the central square, the Grand Place, where Roubaix’s beautiful town hall is located. North of the town hall, you can visit the church Église Saint-Martin, and from the Grand Place the street Grande Rue leaves.
A short distance west of the Grand Place is La Piscine – Musée d’art et d’industrie, an art and industry museum housed in an art deco swimming hall from 1932. The museum is interestingly furnished in the different setting, and here you can see works by, among others, Rodin and Picasso.
Arras is a cozy town on the French border with Belgium. Arras is an old town which literally came into the firing line during the First World War, where the front was only about ten kilometers from the town. At the end of the war, most of Arras lay in ruins, and a colossal reconstruction was initiated, the fine result of which can be seen today.
There are two large and central squares in Arras. It is the Grand’ Place, where the gabled houses stand harmoniously in rows all around. This cityscape is repeated in the street to the south-west to the Place des Héros, where the gabled houses line three sides and where Arras’ beautiful town hall stands at the western end of the square. The many gabled houses on both squares are in beautiful Flemish Baroque.
The town hall and its bell tower on the Place des Héros were built between 1463 and 1554, and it also had to be rebuilt after the First World War. The bell tower is 75 meters high and was built as a watchtower. Today the tower is open and there is an excellent view of the city from here. The tower, together with other bell towers in Belgium and France, is included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
A little west of the two famous squares of Arras, you can see the city’s cathedral, Cathédrale Notre-Dame de l’Assomption et Saint Vaast d’Arras. The cathedral was originally built 1030-1396, but it was destroyed during the French Revolution. The current church is a reconstruction of the cathedral as it was built in the 19th century. Close by, you can visit the art museum Le Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arras, located in a former Benedictine monastery.
There are several other attractions in the city. They count one of the engineer Vauban’s citadels and a network of old tunnels under the city. If you want to see more about the war history of the area, there are two interesting places north of Arras. You can, for example, go to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial, which is a monument that was inaugurated in 1936 in memory of fallen Canadian soldiers. A little north from here, you can visit the Nécropole Nationale de Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, which is the largest French military cemetery.
Douai is a northern French town whose history goes back to a Roman fortress on the site. Later, Douai became subject to the Counts of Flanders, and it became a thriving center for the textile trade in the Middle Ages. In the 18th century, the city was first destroyed by the British army and then the seat of the Parliament of Flanders. There was fighting in the region during World War I that was not as severe over Douai as other cities.
You can start a tour of the city at the Place d’Armes, from where you can walk along the Rue de la Mairie to the Beffroi de Douai, where Douai’s famous bell tower, which, together with a number of Belgian and French towers, has been included in UNESCO’s world heritage list. The tower of Douai was built from 1390 and it has a height of 61 meters. In the tower there are 62 bells that span five octaves.
The bell tower was built adjacent to Douai’s town hall as a symbol of the city’s freedom and rights. It was erected as a symbol of the city’s competition with the ruling nobility and the church’s bell tower. The first floors were built 1390-1392 with the first bells. Later, the tower was built higher and with a spire. There is access to the bell tower, from which there is a sumptuous panoramic view of Douai.
You can also see some interesting churches in Douai such as Collégiale Saint-Pierre and Église Saint-Jacques. Douai was formerly protected by walls and city gates until these were looped. However, you can see some preserved remains of the old fortifications, such as the Porte d’Arras from the 14th century. There are also several museums in the city such as the Musée de la Chartreuse art museum, located in a beautiful Carthusian monastery.
Dunkirk is France’s northernmost city, and it is a city with a large harbor and a number of attractions. Dunkirk grew up as a fishing town, and with its location, power changed several times throughout history. The city’s maritime history leaves its mark on Dunkerque, which has one of France’s largest ports, and you can see, among other things, a statue of Jean Bart, who was an admiral and privateer. You can also take some lovely walks along the water and at the city’s marina.
During World War II, Dunkirk was exposed to many allied bombings, but today you can still see some buildings from the old city. You can start a stroll at Place Charles Valentin, where the city’s town hall is located. It was built in the Neo-Flemish style from 1897 to 1901, and it was partially rebuilt after World War II. The town hall’s bell tower, along with other towers in the region, is on UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites.
If you go south from the town hall, you will come to the Église Saint-Éloi, Dunkirk’s main Catholic church. To the west of the church itself, you can see a free-standing bell tower, which also belongs to the world heritage of bell towers. The church was built several times from the middle of the 16th century in Gothic style. The tower was built in 1233 as a watchtower and lighthouse, and in the 15th century it was raised and converted into the church’s bell tower.
Calais is a beautifully located city on the English Channel, and it is one of the northernmost cities in France. From Calais there is a view of the Straits of Dover, where the English coast can be seen a good 30 kilometers to the north-west. And it is as a port city that Calais has developed, where already in the Middle Ages the city was the center of transport and trade with England, which also had dominion over the strategically important city. This was the case from 1347, when Edward III conquered the city. Calais became formally English with the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360.
Edward III wanted to execute all the town’s inhabitants for their defense against England but ended up settling for six high-ranking citizens who sacrificed themselves to save the town’s other inhabitants. However, their lives were spared by the queen’s intervention. Under the English crown, Calais developed with a large production of wool and as a gateway to England for many important goods
Ghent is a Belgian city with a past as one of Europe’s largest cities. It was once the center of Europe’s wool and textile trade, and there was a strong urbanization and industrialization early on. Together with the success of the merchants, it created tremendous wealth, which resulted in, for example, many of the beautiful buildings visitors can see in the city center today.
Cathedrals, churches, monasteries, squares, merchant residences and museums are located in large numbers between the canals in the old town which have retained its medieval character. The large buildings stands next to each other, and the city center is laid out nicely as a continuous open urban space.
Bruges is one of Europe’s old and rich trading centers, where the fine history of merchants and shipping has created a tourist gem in western Flanders. Here, Flemish urbanization has, over time, gone hand in hand with cultural and economic progress, and the result is so picturesque and interesting with loads of beautiful buildings.
The city’s central squares with Markt and Burg at the forefront are great places to enjoy the the spirit of centuries of architecture. Churches are located at the squares, where the town hall and other famous buildings have been built on the profits of the trade.
80 Rue Pierre Mauroy
100 Avenue Willy Brandt
westfield.com/euralille
Rue de Bethune, Rue de la Monnaie, Rue de la Grande Chaussée
Place du Concert
Parc Zoologique de Lille
Avenue Mathias Delobel
zoo.lille.fr
Musée d’histoire naturelle de Lille
19 Rue de Bruxelles
mhn.lille.fr
Cita-Parc
Avenue Mathias Delobel
cita-parc.fr
Chambre de Commerce, Lille, France[/caption]
Overview of Lille
Lille is the main city of the Hauts-de-France region, and as an urban area it is France’s fourth largest. It is also a city with fine sights, exciting museums and a large number of cafés and restaurants that are worth traveling here for.
Lovely walks await in Lille, where you can enjoy a city center with beautiful buildings. Place du Général-de-Gaulle is the right place to start, and here you can see the Vielle Bourse. Within comfortable walking distance, you can see the city’s churches, with the cathedral at the head, and the city’s town hall with its 104 meter high tower.
Lille is also a city with many museums. The Palais des Beaux-Arts is the city’s and one of France’s leading art museums with works by countless masters from different times and countries. Another museum is the one located in Charles de Gaulle’s birthplace, where part of France’s history is described.
About the Whitehorse travel guide
Contents: Tours in the city + tours in the surrounding area
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Language: English
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Porte de Paris is the name of one of the city gates that used to be located in Lille’s historic city walls. The Porte de Paris was built as a city gate in the years 1685-1692, and it happened as a symbol of Lille’s entry into France.
The site where the Porte de Paris was built was where King Louis XIV passed in 1667 to receive the key to the city. The following year, Lille became French after the Peace of Aachen. Louis XIV appointed Simon Vollant to replace the then Porte des Malades with the current and imposing city gate.
Vielle Bourse is Lille’s old trade exchange, which was built in 1652-1653 with permission from the Spanish king. At the opening, there were 24 traders who were given stalls in the building, which is located between the Grand Place and the Place du Théâtre as one of Lille’s well-known and beautiful landmarks today.
The fine building was erected in a magnificent building that could compare with similar places in competing cities such as Antwerp. Today you can enjoy the building’s exterior and also the fine arcades in the stock exchange’s inner courtyard, to which there are four entrances. Previously there was a statue of Napoleon in the middle of the courtyard.
Maison Natale Charles de Gaulle is the place where de Gaulle was born in 1890. The house in Rue Princesse was then owned by the later president’s maternal grandparents.
Since 1983, the house has been set up as a museum, where you can see effects from Charles de Gaulle’s life and a typical interior from the industrial middle class of the 19th century.
Citadelle is Lille’s large and well-preserved citadel, which was built 1667-1670. It was the military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban who designed the citadel, which is considered perhaps the finest of Vauban’s many contemporary military installations. It was built as part of a defensive belt along France’s northeastern border.
The citadel has the five bastions of Anjou, La Reine, Turenne, Le Dauphin and Le Roi, and there were watchtowers along the outer walls. The entrances to the central part of the citadel were via the gates Porte Royale to the east and Porte Dauphine to the west.
In the citadel itself, the facility’s buildings are arranged around the pentagonal armory, the Place d’Armes. The citadel’s church was built here, just as the commander’s and governor’s buildings, officer’s buildings, barracks, arsenal and powder depot were built as the most important facilities.
The Chambre de Commerce de Lille is a chamber of commerce founded in 1701 and established in Lille in 1715 after the return of French Flanders to France with the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. By the end of the 19th century, activities had grown and the chamber of commerce wanted to gather in one place where there was also room for a museum.
The solution was the construction of the current Flemish Renaissance building, which stands with its bell tower as one of Lille’s best-known buildings. It was the architect Louis Marie Cordonnier who was given the task of designing the building, and after several adjustments, construction began in 1909, and the house was completed in 1921.
The most characteristic feature of the beautiful building is the 76 meter high tower. The decoration of the Chamber of Commerce drew inspiration from famous Dutch town halls and the style that prevailed in Lille in past centuries. The most distinguished floor in the building is the 25×25 meter Hall d’Honneur, which is topped with a large dome.
Église Saint-Maurice is a large parish church that was built in Lille over several centuries. Part of the church dates to the 14th century, while the choir, side chapels and an extension of the nave were completed in the 15th century.
Additions were made and extended until the 19th century, when Église Saint-Maurice was intended to be given the status of Lille’s cathedral, but this did not happen. The striking bell tower was built 1867-1877.
There are many works of art and decorations on and in the church worth seeing, such as statues and beautiful stained glass windows. It was Charles Gaudelet who produced the mosaics that were installed in the church between 1859 and 1861.
Hospice Comtesse Museum is a museum in Lille, housed in a former hospital founded in 1237 by Jeanne de Flandre. The old hospital burned down in 1468, and the site was rebuilt in the following years, and expansion took place until the 18th century, from which you can also see a lot of the interior.
Hospice Comtesse was converted into a museum in 1962, and the name is Musée d’Art et d’Histoire. At the museum you can experience the social and cultural life in Lille throughout the 1600s and 1700s. There are also rooms and exhibitions where other themes, contemporary works and so on are presented.
Jardin des Plantes is a municipal botanical garden in Lille. The garden was established in 1948 as a successor to other botanical gardens whose history started with the first establishment in 1596. The garden is one of three botanical gardens in the city. The others are Jardin botanique de la Faculté de Pharmacie and Jardin botanique Nicolas Boulay.
In the Jardin des Plantes you can experience fine plants and many plants, which are grouped according to their families. There is also an orangery in the garden, where Mediterranean plants grow, and you can also visit the garden’s tropical greenhouse with, among other things, banana palms and coffee plants. A rose garden has also been planted here, and you can also see a beautiful collection of dahlias among the many growths.
Les Tulipes de Shangri-La is the name of a beautiful work of art consisting of brightly colored tulips that stands in Lille’s cityscape. You can see the tulips on the Esplanade François-Mitterand.
The artwork was created by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. It is seven meters high and was erected in connection with Lille’s status as European Capital of Culture in 2004.
Opéra de Lille is an opera house that was built in period architecture from the belle époque era in the years 1907-1913. However, the opera tradition in the city dates back to a short time after Lille became French in 1668. At that time, productions were carried out in the city’s town hall.
An opera house was built in 1785-1788, but it burned down in 1903, and so a new opera house was decided upon, which Louis Marie Cordonnier was chosen to design after a competition. Inside the building you can see lavishly decorated halls, staircases and the opera’s foyer.
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