Lille

The central square, where a goddess on a column marks the city holding out through the siege of 1792. Flemish gabled buildings frame it, the regional newspaper's stepped-roof block standing out among them. At Christmas a big Ferris wheel goes up in the square.

A 17th-century Flemish Renaissance exchange put up by merchants, twenty-four small houses wrapping one courtyard. In the afternoon secondhand book stalls open along the arcades while locals play chess in a corner. Summer Sunday evenings bring tango there.

Among the largest French art museums outside Paris, with Goya and Rubens in the collection. In a dim basement room lie scale relief models of frontier fortress towns made under Louis XIV, and some visitors come for those alone.

The old quarter, where 17th- and 18th-century houses of red brick and white stone line Rue de la Monnaie. At the end, Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille has a facade of marble sliced so thin that after dark the lights inside glow through it.

Vauban's star-shaped fortress is still an army base, so the interior opens only on guided visits. The woods around the moat form a public park full of runners, with a small zoo tucked into one corner.

A brick bell tower attached to a 20th-century city hall, UNESCO-listed with the other belfries of Flanders. A lift handles most of the height and stairs finish the job. In good visibility the plain can be traced into Belgium.

An art museum in the Art Deco indoor pool of neighbouring Roubaix, kept as it was. Sculptures stand along the central basin, which still holds water, and a stained-glass sun shines back off the water. Mondays it is closed; the metro gets you there from Lille.

Robert Mallet-Stevens designed this modernist house in the 1930s for a textile family. Left empty and stripped, it was bought by the state and restored down to the furniture. It stands among houses in Croix, just outside Lille, minutes from a tram stop.

A museum that puts modern art, contemporary art and outsider art under one roof, holding one of France's biggest collections by artists with no formal training. It stands in a lakeside park, so the sculpture garden comes with the visit.

A working-class quarter where the market fills the brick hall and spills outside it, biggest on Sunday morning. Vegetables, North African spices and secondhand clothes overflow the square into the side streets. After lunch the stalls begin folding away.

A hospital founded in 1237 by Countess Jeanne of Flanders, now a museum. Its long ward survives under a timber vault like an upturned hull. Do not skip the kitchen, its walls lined in blue Delft tiles.

Charles de Gaulle was born in 1890 in his grandmother's brick house, now a memorial. His christening gown and the family rooms are laid out as they were. It stands on Rue Princesse at the north edge of Vieux-Lille, en route to the citadel.

Set into the ramparts during the late 17th century, this triumphal gate marks Louis XIV's capture of Lille in 1667. At the top, a figure of Victory crowns the king. The town hall belfry stands right beside it, so climbers of the tower pass beneath.

Rebuilt after its predecessor burned, the opera house was almost done in 1914, but the First World War delayed its opening. Sculptures above the front stand for music and tragedy. Its neighbour is the Vieille Bourse, so the Grand Place is a short walk.

A branch of the Louvre opened in 2012 on an old pit site in the mining town of Lens. In the Galerie du Temps, one long pillarless hall, thousands of years of art run in date order. Trains from Lille arrive within the hour.

A town of two linked squares ringed by Flemish gabled houses. Tunnels dug since the Middle Ages spread beneath them, and during the Great War British troops sheltered in the quarry galleries before an attack. Lille trains get there inside an hour.