If any city in France has a more complicated history than Lille’s, I don’t know about it. Now France’s northernmost large city and capital of its region, it has been ruled or ruined by Gauls, Romans, Normans, Magyars, Saxons, Frisians and Franks.
And that doesn’t include more recent periods of rule as capital of Flanders, as part of the Duchy of Burgundy, under Maximillian of Austia, under Countess Jeanne of Flanders and Constantinople (yes, you read that right) and finally under Spanish Habsburg rule until Louis XIV seized it in 1688.
We visited Lille as a day trip from Paris, hoping to see some unusual sights (we did) and also enjoy some Flemish food (we did) and to get a sense of its history. That aspect intrigued us because we had recently spent a week in Strasbourg, which has a checkered history of its own, and also came late into French hands.
Lille went through hard times in the 1960s and 70s as its traditional industries—textiles and coal mining—suffered declines. But Lille has since found a new role as an office and service city, and you might say it was saved by the trains.
When the Channel Tunnel was built, Lille became a pivot point for Eurostar trains linking Brussels, Paris and London. Add to that the TGV route that put Lille just under an hour away from Paris, and you can imagine the effect.
In the years since the 90s, large office complexes and apartments, along with shopping centers, have grown up in the “Euralille” quarter between the classic Gare de Lille-Flandres and the new Lille-Europe station a couple of blocks away.
But the heart of the city is still the Grand Place, only a short walk from Lille-Flandres. The Grand Place is a mixture of the monumental and historic, of smaller buildings and large.
Perhaps the most famous building on Grand Place is the Old Bourse, which appears to be a single large building, but is actually 24 architecturally-unified small buildings grouped around a common courtyard, where merchants and officials gathered to do business in the 17th century. It’s on the right, above.
The impressive tower, seen with the Bourse and above with the Opera House, is a Flemish-Art Nouveau-Art Deco confection that seems much older than its 1932 building date. It’s part of the City Hall, and has an observation level near the top (closed the day we were there).
Also on the Grand Place are a variety of smaller buildings in various styles and colors, pleasant enough for the view, and if you’re looking for a coffee and pastry…many of them are in use for that. The fate of all plazas, it seems!
On the opposite side, the impressive headquarters of a major local newspaper, La Voix du Nord. There’s quite a bit of ‘du Nord’ in Lille, along with accents and language of neighboring Flemish-speaking areas of Belgium.
Because of its position near the Belgian border, Lille was one of the first French cities attacked by the German armies in 1914, and after a siege, they held the city until late 1918. In World War II, Lille also suffered. Just off Grand Place is a monument to the local victims of both wars.
Our lunch in Lille wouldn’t make it onto the top ten for healthy eating but we had fun. First, we visited (twice) the shop of Alex Croquet, a baker who proclaims he’s ‘mad about bread.’ I am, too, and we tried out several varieties including some local specialties.
The follow-up to the bread and pastry was just down the street at Meert, a Lille institution whose hot chocolate is said to have been Gen. de Gaulle’s favorite beverage. It may be a bit like ‘George Washington slept here,’ but we can testify it was excellent, as was the Madagascar-vanilla infused waffle cakes that went with it. Meert’s also worth a look for its facade and metalwork.
Our next objective called for a walk away from Grand Place, and up to the cathedral. Along the way, we got to sample a variety of Lillois architecture in styles spanning hundreds of years, often side-by-side.
We also passed (and passed up) this possibly unique restaurant. Possibly unique, because it shares its name with a restaurant in Montreal, which several TripAdvisor reviewers called one of the worst restaurants ever. But that’s not this one…
And then came the big surprise: The facade of the cathedral. I admit that my first reaction was to think it was a temporary wall to cover construction work going on behind it! The story is actually more complicated than that.
Despite its centuries of history, Lille was never granted a bishop and a cathedral. As the city grew in size and importance in the 19th century, local Catholics and civic leaders began to agitate for one, separate from neighboring dioceses. In the spirit of “if you build it, they will come,” they began work in 1854 on a grand church they hoped would someday be the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de la Treille (the city’s patron saint).
They started in the usual Gothic way, and built the choir. Then a vault, Then the apse. Then a good part of the nave. And then they ran out of money, and after the 1890s, the open end of the church was just left boarded up, while services took place at the other end. Even after a bishop was installed in 1913 and it was designated a cathedral, it was incomplete.
In 1947, a temporary brick and breeze block facade was added to close off the end, stopping short of the intended length.
In the 1980s, civic pride started building a movement to finish the cathedral, to add the final length of the nave and to build the originally-planned magnificent Gothic facade. The problem was that civic pride had a busted budget. At the urging of the then-bishop, a new project was adopted: Leave the nave the length it had reached, and finish it off in a modern style at less cost.
The most spectacular part of the finished work is not the outside. The central portion of the facade is built of 108 blocks of marble, 28 cm thin, that pass light through into interior and surrounding the rose window.
The rose window itself is a spectacular modern piece, depicting the resurrection in semi-abstract forms. It’s the work of Ladislas Kijno, who also had a hand in the contemporary paintings along the walls, depicting the stations of the cross. There’s also a mosaic floor in the main aisle, showing the periods and people of Lille’s history.
If you’re thinking of a trip to Lille:
There are many trains throughout the day from Gare du Nord in Paris to both Lille-Flandres and Lille-Europe. Watch the whole schedule; trains are as little as around €20, but can range higher. And watch your return; your train may leave from the other Lille station.
Near the Flandres station, the streets are lined with small cafes and bistros catering to the commuting crowd; many are reasonably-priced. We enjoyed the traditional Flemish beer-based beef stew, Carbonnade Flamande. And, as close as Lille is to Belgium, the frites were excellent.
