The City That Kept Getting Transferred

Lille has been passed between powers more times than almost any city in Europe: Flemish county, Spanish Habsburg territory, French annexation under Louis XIV in 1667, briefly occupied by the Austrians in 1708, then French again by treaty a few years later. The fortifications Vauban built after Louis XIV finally secured it still ring the city. But what makes Lille unusual is that it didn't lose its Flemish soul in the process — the Vieille Bourse was built at the height of Spanish rule, the estaminets survived every regime change, and Lille still cooks in beer rather than wine.

Something else emerged from the research: Lille was the first major French city industrialised, and the first to be substantially de-industrialised. The same textile mills that made it France's Manchester in the 1800s became abandoned wastelands by the 1970s. The city responded by turning the dereliction into culture — Euralille, a bold new quarter by Rem Koolhaas, was built in the early 1990s literally on top of the old rail yards, and Lille's 2004 European Capital of Culture programme turned empty factory buildings into arts venues. The Vieille Bourse and the béguinage you pass in Vieux-Lille are 350 years old. Euralille is 30. Both feel completely at home.