Just south of the Grand' Place is place Rihour, a largely modern square flanked by brasseries and the remains of an old palace that now houses the tourist office, hidden behind an ugly war monument of gigantic proportions. Close by, the busiest shopping street, rue de Béthune, leads into place de Béthune, home to some excellent cafés, and beyond to the Musée des Beaux-Arts on place de la République (Mon 2–6pm, Wed–Sun 10am–6pm, Fri till 7pm; €4.60). The late-1990s redesign is rather disappointing – too sleek and spacious to create any coherence to the collection – but the museum does contain some important works. Flemish painters form the core of the collection, from "primitives" like Dirck Bouts, through the northern Renaissance to Ruisdael, de Hooch and the seventeenth-century schools. Other works include Goya's interpretation of youth and old age, Les Jeunes et Les Vieilles, and a scattering of Impressionists, including Monet and Renoir. Ceramics are well represented in one of the two rooms on the ground floor; the other room displays a small collection of nineteenth-century sculpture.A couple of blocks to the southwest of the museum, on rue de Fleurus, is Maison Coilliot, a ceramics shop and one of the few houses built by Hector Guimard, who made his name designing the Art Nouveau entrances to the Paris métro. Built at the height of the Art Nouveau movement, it's as striking today as it obviously was to the conservative burghers of Lille (there are no other such buildings in the city), but it also displays the somewhat muddled eclecticism of the style, coming over as half brick-faced mansion, half timber-framed cottage. East of the museum, near the triumphal arch of Porte de Paris, the city's Hôtel de Ville is also worth a quick look, executed in a bizarre, Flemish Art Deco style, with a tall belfry and viewing platform (closed at the time of writing but due to reopen in time for the 2004 celebrations; check for details with the tourist office).
| 