Lille

Lille is France with a Flemish accent. The capital of French Flanders changed hands between counts, dukes of Burgundy, Habsburgs and kings before Louis XIV took it in 1667 and had Vauban wrap it in the "queen of citadels", a five-pointed star of brick still garrisoned today. The old town he acquired remains gloriously un-French: gabled facades in red brick and gilded stone, the Vieille Bourse's courtyard where booksellers trade under Flemish caryatids, and a grand square that feels closer to Ghent than to Paris. Once a year, on the first September weekend, the Braderie turns the whole city into Europe's largest flea market, fuelled by moules-frites and measured in mountains of shells.

The city's cultural weight is serious: the Palais des Beaux-Arts ranks among France's greatest museums, Charles de Gaulle was born in its streets, and since its year as European Capital of Culture in 2004 Lille has run on a permanent festival metabolism. Music has a full establishment here — the Opéra de Lille in its neo-classical house, and the Orchestre National de Lille, built by Jean-Claude Casadesus into one of France's leading orchestras. Among the city's stages stands the Église Sainte-Catherine in the old town, a broad Flemish hallekerk that keeps a Rubens over its altar and lends its acoustics to concerts — sacred space on secular duty, in a city that has always traded across every border, including that one.