Flemish cities and world war battlefields
France > North > Flemish cities
From the Middle Ages until the late twentieth century great Flemish cities like Lille, Roubaix, Douai and Cambrai flourished, mainly thanks to their thriving textiles industries which used locally grown flax and imported wool. The other dominating – though now all but extinct – presence in this part of northern France was the coalfields and related industries, which, at their peak in the nineteenth century, formed a continuous stretch from Béthune in the west to Valenciennes in the east. At Lewarde you can visit one of the pits, while in the region's big industrial cities you can see what the masters did with their profits: noble town houses, magnificent city halls, ornate churches and some of the country's finest art collections. Lille is now a major trans-European communications hub and, despite visible problems of post-industrial urban decay, is doing its utmost to turn itself into a noteworthy tourist attraction.On a more sombre note, Picardy, Artois and Flanders are littered with the monuments, battlefields and cemeteries of the two world wars, and nowhere as intensely as the region northeast of Amiens, between Albert and the appealing market town of Arras with its pair of handsome squares. It was here, among the fields and villages of the Somme, that the main battle lines of World War I were drawn. They can be visited most spectacularly at Vimy Ridge, just off the A26 north of Arras, where the trenches have been left in situ. Lesser sites, often more poignant, are dotted over the countryside around Albert and along the Circuit de Souvenir.
Pages in section ‘Flemish cities’: Lille, Villeneuve, Roubaix, Douai, Lewarde, Cambrai, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Arras and the Somme battlefields.
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