Lille

Lille grew on marshy ground beside the Deûle, and its name comes from l'Isle, "the island"; its Dutch name, Rijsel, has the same origin. The town is first mentioned in 1066 as apud Insulam, under the counts of Flanders, and from the 12th century its cloth fair made it famous. Countess Joan of Flanders granted a city charter in 1235 and founded the Hospice Comtesse in 1236. After the marriage of Margaret of Flanders to Philip the Bold in 1369 it became one of the three capitals of the Burgundian state, and in 1454 Philip the Good held the lavish Feast of the Pheasant at his palace here.

Through Mary of Burgundy it passed to the Habsburgs and stayed under Spanish rule until Louis XIV besieged it in 1667. Vauban built the Citadel and new quarters were laid out; the Dutch held the city from 1708 to 1713. It withstood an Austrian siege in 1792 and became the seat of the Nord department in 1804. The 19th century made Lille a cotton-spinning city beside wool-working Roubaix and Tourcoing, with slum cellars that Victor Hugo denounced; in 1896 it became the first French city led by a socialist.

German troops occupied Lille from October 1914 to October 1918 after shelling destroyed much of the centre, and again from 1940. In 1921 Calmette and Guérin developed the BCG vaccine at the city's Pasteur Institute. The decline of textiles from the 1960s brought decades of crisis. Under Pierre Mauroy, mayor from 1973 to 2001, the city opened the VAL metro in 1983 and won the TGV, Euralille and the Eurostar in the 1990s, and in 2004 it was European Capital of Culture.

Lille calls itself the capital of Flanders, and its culture mixes French, Flemish and Picard strands — brick row houses, belfries, beer and the Ch'ti speech of the north. Leisure has always been communal: in 1858 the city had some 1,300 taverns for 80,000 people and dozens of drinking, singing, bowling and archery clubs, and Alexandre Desrousseaux wrote the lullaby "P'tit Quinquin" here in 1853. Pierre De Geyter, a Lille textile worker, composed the music of The Internationale here.

The Braderie, held on the first weekend of September, is Europe's largest flea market, when much of the centre closes to traffic, residents and traders sell from the pavements, and restaurants pile up mussel shells. Since its year as European Capital of Culture in 2004, the Lille 3000 programme has staged themed seasons every few years, and in 2020 the metropolis was World Design Capital. The Palais des Beaux-Arts is one of France's largest art museums.

Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille in 1890, and his birthplace is a museum. Football means Lille OSC, which won the league and cup double in 2010–11 and the league again in 2020–21 and plays at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy. With more than 110,000 students in the metropolis, the city feels young, especially around the Rue Masséna and Solférino at night.

About 238,000 people lived in the city in 2023, within a small territory of 35 square kilometres, but the European Metropolis of Lille, grouping Lille with 94 other communes including Roubaix, Tourcoing and Villeneuve-d'Ascq, has about 1.2 million. Across the border it merges with Kortrijk, Tournai and Mouscron in a cross-border Eurometropolis. Lille is the prefecture of the Nord and the capital of Hauts-de-France.

Services account for about nine jobs in ten. Euralille is one of France's largest business districts, the universities and schools — the University of Lille alone has some 70,000 students — are major employers, and services have replaced the textile mills. Great wealth and real poverty have long lived side by side, and the city's household poverty rate, 27 per cent, is well above the national figure.

Many residential streets are lined with two- and three-storey brick terraced houses with narrow back gardens, a style more common in Belgium and England than in France. Vieux-Lille is the oldest and most sought-after district, while Wazemmes is known for its market and its lively community and arts life. Sunday morning at the Wazemmes market, a beer on a terrace and weekend trips to the coast or across the border are part of the routine, and air pollution is a persistent local concern.

Lille's kitchen is Flemish and built around beer. Carbonade flamande is a stew made with beer and mustard, its sauce sometimes thickened with bread or gingerbread and finished with brown sugar; potjevleesch, from French Flanders, sets pieces of chicken, rabbit, pork and veal in a lightly vinegared jelly and is eaten cold with chips, which melt the jelly. The welsh, cheddar melted over toasted bread and baked, often with beer, came from Wales but is now a brasserie staple across the Nord.

Mussels with chips, moules-frites, are the dish of the Braderie, and chips from a roadside friterie are close to a regional emblem. The cheeses are strong: Maroilles, a cow's-milk cheese from the Thiérache with a protected name, is baked into tarts, and its longer-cured cousin is called Vieux-Lille. Endives, known locally as chicons, are baked with ham and béchamel.

For something sweet, Méert, founded in 1761, is known for thin waffles filled with vanilla, and the north is also known for tarte au sucre. The beers are bières de garde — copper or golden, traditionally matured after bottling — alongside local craft breweries, and genièvre, a juniper spirit, ends a meal or goes into coffee. The estaminets of Vieux-Lille, with their wooden tables and Flemish dishes, are the place to try the classics.