Lille

I have to admit that before I moved to France I hardly had any notion about a city called Lille, just "one more middle size French city up in the north". Once here, I found out that if we consider its Urban area or Metropolitan area, its population is right before Toulouse in the ranking of French cities (the city proper is much smaller), making it the fourth after Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Bearing in mind that so far any French city with more than 20.000 inhabitants that I've been to is is well worth the visit (you'll always have a Hotel de Ville, Prefecture, Palais de Justice and Cathedral to delight your eyes), Lille had to be good place for a weekend. As it's a bit far for going by train I delayed it quite a bit, but last weekend I finally made it there (thanks Easyjet!)

Obviously I had done some reading about the city before going there, and it looked pretty promising, but reality quite exceeded my expectations. Lille does not belong to that group of "small Paris like" French cities like Lyon, Nantes or Bordeaux, it goes in the group of "very unique" French cities, like Toulouse, Marseille and Nice.

The main point to take into account is that Lille lies in what is called French Flanders a part of the historical county of Flanders that nowadays belongs to France. It's pretty curious, it would be easier to imagine a "French Wallonia", but well, Brussels was originally a Flemish city, and it's now mainly French speaking... so it's not so unique. Adding to confusion, it seems that this "French Flanders" area has one part that originally spoke Flemish and another (Lille goes there) that initially spoke Picard (a Romance language). The thing is that with its Flemish past, Lille looks absolutely like a Belgian city Anwerp, Ghent or Brussels. Indeed, having been in all of these beautiful cities, I would say that Lille features the most impressive architectonic ensemble of all of them. The "old Flemish" buildings, like the Vieille Bourse, are amazing, but the "neo Flemish" ones, like the Chambre de Commerce have not lowered the bar.

At the end of last century, faced with the decline of their tradicional industries: coal and textiles, local politicians decided to foster the services sector, and they absolutely succeeded, managing to create a huge economical hub just in between of Paris and Brussels. One of the main milestones in conducting this transformation into the service sector was the Creation of EuraLille, the biggest business district in France after La Défense in Paris and La Part-Dieu in Lyon. This district is a real delight for anyone into modern architecture. It's not too impressive in terms of height (120 meters for the tallest building), but the architectonic features are really remarkable and make wandering around the area a real pleasure. I'd really love to see the projected TESO (Toulouse EuroSudOuest) district to become something similar.

Lille can be a bit disconcerting in terms of population. The city proper is only 230.000 inhabitants, the urban area, that includes several cities (Roubaix, Tourcoing, Villeneuve...) of around 80.000, grows to more than 1 million, and then the metropolitan area, that includes several Belgian cities grows to more than 2 millions. Furthermore, less than 40 kilometers away to each side you'll find 2 more metropolitan areas, each of around 1/2 million: Douai/Lens, and Valenciennes, so it's a heavily urban area, resembling the Rhine_Ruhr in Germany, the Flemish Diamond in Belgium, or the Randstad in the Netherlands. Notice that the 4 areas are part of the Blue Banana, the discontinuous corridor of urbanisation in Western Europe.

Last December, the FN was sadly on the verge of winning the regional elections in Nord-Pas de Calais-Picardie. One of the "start measures" that these bastards want to carry out is taking France out of the EU. Obviously the idea is sickening and ridiculous, but in a city with a metropolitan area that crosses the border into Belgium, the "idea" is just senseless.