Lille in 4 days

The main square, officially Place du Général-de-Gaulle, with the Goddess column, faces the Vieille Bourse of 1653: 24 identical Flemish houses around a tiny courtyard.

Wander without a route: half-open carriage doors reveal cobbled courtyards, and nearby Rue Péterinck, with its wooden signs, is quieter than the tiny square.

One of France's largest art collections, with Rubens, Goya and Delacroix upstairs and, in the basement, giant 18th-century relief models of the northern fortified towns.

At 104 metres, this reinforced concrete belfry finished in 1932 is Europe's tallest and UNESCO-listed; on clear days the platform shows the mining slag heaps.

Lille's most mixed market, in and around a 19th-century hall: Flemish growers, North African grocers, West African fabrics and flea-market stalls, busiest on Sunday mornings.

An hour's flat, shaded walk around the moats, shared with runners and anglers; frame the carved Porte Royale from the entrance bridge.

Start with the curved concrete wing of outsider art, the most unsettling part, before the cubists; Aloïse Corbaz and Gaston Chaissac deserve real time.

A museum in former Art Deco baths, the pool still rippling under the vault, with Camille Claudel's Little Châtelaine and fabric drawers you open yourself.