Must-see attractions in Lille, Flanders & the Somme

  • Amiens Cathedrale Notre Dame

    Cathédrale Notre Dame

    Amiens

    A Unesco World Heritage Site, the largest Gothic cathedral in France (at 145m long) and the largest in the world by volume was begun in 1220 to house the…

  • Palais des Beaux Arts

    Lille

    Inaugurated in 1892, Lille's illustrious Fine Arts Museum claims France's second-largest collection after Paris' Musée du Louvre. Its cache of sublime…

  • Palais de Compiègne

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    This 1337-room palace, originally built for Louis XV, hosted Napoléon III's dazzling hunting parties, which drew aristocrats from all around Europe. A…

  • Historial de la Grande Guerre

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    For historical and cultural context, the best place to begin a visit to the Somme battlefields is the outstanding Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne…

  • Cathédrale Notre Dame

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    A model for several of its more famous Gothic sisters – Chartres, Reims, Dijon and Paris' Notre-Dame among them – this medieval jewel was built between…

  • La Cité Souterraine de Naours

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Believed to date from the 3rd century AD, this extraordinary underground 'city' of quarried tunnels was started by the Romans and expanded over the…

  • Grand' Place & Place des Héros

    Arras

    Arras' two ancient market squares, the Grand' Place and the almost-adjacent, smaller place des Héros (also known as the Petite Place), are surrounded by…

  • Ring of Remembrance

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    It's hard not to be overwhelmed by the waste and folly of the Western Front as you walk past panel after panel engraved with 579,606 tiny names: WWI dead…

  • La Piscine Musée d'Art et d'Industrie

    Lille

    An art deco municipal swimming pool built between 1927 and 1932 is now an innovative museum showcasing fine arts (paintings, sculptures, drawings) and…

  • Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.

    Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Cemetery & Museum

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    The death toll was horrific – 1917 Australians and 519 Britons killed in just one day of fighting – yet the Battle of Fromelles was largely forgotten…

  • Military trenches made from concrete at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France.

    Vimy Ridge Canadian National Historic Site

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    After the war, the French attempted to erase signs of battle and return northern France to agriculture and normalcy. Conversely, the Canadians remembered…

  • Thiepval Memorial.

    Thiepval Memorial & Museum

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Its silhouette instantly recognisable from afar, this 45m-high memorial to the missing of the Somme, 7.5km northeast of Albert, is inscribed with the…

  • House-museum of Jules Verne in Amiens, France.

    Maison de Jules Verne

    Amiens

    Jules Verne (1828–1905) wrote some of his best-known works of brain-tingling – and eerily prescient – science fiction under the eaves of this turreted…

  • Parc du Marquenterre Bird Sanctuary

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    An astonishing 300 bird species have been sighted at this 2-sq-km bird sanctuary, an important migratory stopover between the UK, Iceland, Scandinavia and…

  • Clairière de l'Armistice

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    The armistice that put an end to WWI was signed in a thick forest 6.5km east of Compiègne, inside the railway carriage of the Allied supreme commander. On…

  • Somme American Cemetery

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    In late September 1918, just six weeks before the end of WWI, American units – flanked by their British, Canadian and Australian allies – launched an…

  • Carrière Wellington

    Arras

    Staging ground for the spring 1917 offensive, Wellington Quarry is a 20m-deep network of old chalk quarries expanded during WWI by tunnellers from New…

  • Musée Franco-Australien

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Some 2400 Australian soldiers were killed or wounded in the April 1918 assault that wrested Villers-Bretonneux from German control. In the 1920s,…

  • Lens' 14-18 Museum

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Housed in four black concrete cubes, this 2015-opened WWI museum provides an in-depth introduction to WWI on the Western Front. Over 300 extraordinary…

  • Le Beffroi

    Dunkirk

    Dunkirk's landmark 58m-high belfry – the bell tower of the original Église St-Éloi before it burnt to the ground in 1558 – was erected in 1440 and has…

  • Hôtel de Ville

    Lille

    Built between 1924 and 1932, Lille's city hall is topped by a slender, 104m-high belfry that was designated a Unesco-listed monument in 2004. Climbing 100…

  • Abbaye de Valloires

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Nestled in the bucolic Authie valley 27km northeast of Le Crotoy, this strikingly beautiful 12th-century abbey, rebuilt between 1687 and 1756, merits a…

  • Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    This evocative memorial preserves part of the Western Front in the state it was in at fighting's end. The zigzag trench system, which still fills with mud…

  • Louvre-Lens

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    The innovative Louvre-Lens, opened in 2012, showcases hundreds of treasures from Paris' venerable Musée du Louvre in state-of-the-art exhibition spaces…

  • Wazemmes

    Lille

    For an authentic taste of grassroots Lille, head to the ethnically diverse, family-friendly quartier populaire (working-class quarter) of Wazemmes, 1.3km…

  • Mémorial Sud-Africain Delville Wood

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    The memorial (1926) and star-shaped museum (1986), a replica of Cape Town's Castle of Good Hope, stand in the middle of Delville Wood, where in July 1916…

  • Australian National War Memorial

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    During WWI, 416,809 Australians – 8% of the country's population – volunteered for overseas military service; 46,000 met their deaths on the Western Front…

  • Hôtel de Ville

    Arras

    Arras' Flemish Gothic city hall dates from the 16th century but was completely rebuilt after WWI. Four géants (giants) live in the lobby. For a panoramic…

  • Ayette Indian & Chinese Cemetery

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Towards the end of WWI, tens of thousands of Chinese labourers were recruited by the British government to perform noncombat jobs in Europe, including the…

  • Burghers of Calais

    Calais

    In front of Calais' ornate Hôtel de Ville stands the first cast of Rodin's famous sculpture Les Bourgeois de Calais (The Burghers of Calais; 1889), which…

  • Ulster Memorial Tower

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    The 5000 Ulstermen who perished in the Battle of the Somme are commemorated by this 21m-high Gothic-style tower, an exact replica of Helen’s Tower at…

  • Église St-Éloi

    Dunkirk

    Constructed in 1560, the Église St-Éloi was refaced with a neo-Gothic façade completed in 1889. It's dubbed la cathédrale des sables (cathedral of the…

  • Blériot Plage

    Calais

    This broad, gently sloping sandy beach stretching for 8km is safe for swimming and gets packed in summer.

  • Musée Franco-Américain

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Inside the 1612-built Château de Blérancourt, 33km northeast of Compiègne, the French–American museum reopened in 2017 after a decade of archaeological…

  • Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    The Mémorial Indien, 27km southwest of Lille, records the names of 4700 soldiers and labourers of the Indian Army who 'have no known grave'. The 15m-high…

  • Hôtel de Ville

    Calais

    Inaugurated in 1925, Calais' Hôtel de Ville (city hall) melds Flemish and Renaissance styles, as does its 78m-high, Unesco-listed beffroi (belfry) topped…

  • La Grande Mine

    Lille, Flanders & the Somme

    Just outside the hamlet of La Boisselle, 4.5km northeast of Albert, this enormous crater looks like the site of a meteor impact. Some 100m across and 30m…