Lille is this year's European Capital City of Culture. The title was last held in the UK by Glasgow in 1990 and is coming to Britain next when Liverpool takes the award in 2008. (With the enlargement of the EU, Britain will presumably not be in the running again until some time in the 2030s, unless the rules are changed.)
Glasgow and its museums got a considerable boost from its year in the spotlight. Liverpool is hoping for the same, although the sudden cancellation of Will Alsop's wacky Fourth Grace project means there is now no chance of achieving the Bilbao effect of a new cultural building, transforming the image of a run-down port city, in the way that Frank Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Museum has done in Spain.
An embarrassing loss of nerve like this would never happen in France either, as those holding the purse strings in Liverpool would discover if they checked out Lille to look at its approach to culture based regeneration.
With the recently improved Eurostar schedules, Lille is now only 1 hour 40 minutes from London by train (OK, it's a bit longer from Liverpool) and has a lot to recommend it for anyone interested in a combined cultural, architectural and foodie weekend.
There are thousands of special arts and cultural events and activities taking place in Lille during 2004 (go to www.lille2004.com before planning a trip). But even if you choose to ignore the busy, changing programme there are two particularly impressive museum and gallery developments that deserve a visit.
First, the monumental Palais des Beaux Arts (Fine Arts Museum). This was built in the 1890s and reopened in 1997 by President Chirac following a radical internal renovation and extension by architects Jean-Marc Ibos and Myrto Vitart.
Their designs included opening up the huge central atrium space and creating an underground temporary exhibition hall, top-lit through a sheet of water from the forecourt above. This sculpture forecourt is closed on one side by a new 'blade' administration block with a mirrored glass grid facade, which dramatically reflects the old building.
The new setting is impressive, but so too is the museum's rehung collection, which is said to be second only, in France, to the Louvre. Expect to see plenty of Raphaels, Rubens, Goyas, impressionists, Picassos and Rodin's Burghers of Calais, among others. According to my guidebook, many of the paintings were restored at the National Gallery in London in the 1990s after being personally escorted over on the Eurostar by the chief curator.
My own favourite exhibits here were not the paintings but an amazing collection of historic models of 19 key towns in late 17th century northern France and Flanders. These were made for the architect Vauban to show his master Louis XIV how he planned to fortify the Sun King's newly acquired possessions, including Lille and Calais. Don't miss these finely detailed miniatures, which form a dramatic display taking up more than half the refurbished vaults of the museum.
After seeing the Palais des Beaux Arts, take a trip out of town to La Piscine, the new Museum of Art and Industry in Roubaix. The Lille conurbation extends north-eastwards from France across to Belgium, less than 10km away.
About halfway between Lille and the border is Roubaix, technically a separate town but now part of Lille Metropole. The continuous built-up urban area is linked by a recently refurbished century-old tramway and the slightly scary VAL automated metro, which whisks you underground to Roubaix from the centre of Lille in about 20 minutes.
Sit in the front seats for the full subterranean rollercoaster experience of the metro one way, then come back on the tram for a more leisurely overground ride along the Grand Boulevard, through Lille's early 20th century garden suburb and alongside the 18th century landscaped Parc Barbieux.
Roubaix is to Lille as Bradford is to Leeds and, appropriately enough, all four of these textile towns are twinned. Like Bradford, Roubaix's glory days were at the end of the 19th century when it was known as the town of a thousand chimneys because of its textile factories.
Now Roubaix is successfully remodelling itself as a post-industrial city with an ambitious reworking of its urban fabric. This includes extensive refurbishment and new use, rather than demolition, of a number of key historic buildings.
The outstanding example of this is La Piscine, a stunning art deco municipal swimming pool and baths complex built in 1928-32. Closed in 1985, the site has been converted with great style into an art and textile museum, which opened two years ago.
The architect, Jean-Paul Philippon, worked on the conversion of the long disused Gare d'Orsay in Paris into the spectacular Musee d'Orsay of 19th century decorative arts in the 1980s. His conversion of La Piscine shows similar inventiveness.
The atmosphere and character of a building designed for a completely different purpose has been retained but adaptations have been made to suit its new use as a museum and give it a creative twist.
It is the sort of thing the French are rather good at but would probably be scuppered in this country by a rigid application of building regulations and the listing process. I can't imagine a similar museum conversion ever being accepted as the salvation of the wonderful Victoria Baths in Manchester that won the BBC Restoration programme last year, but you never know.
The heart of La Piscine is the original barrel-vaulted pool hall, which has a huge semi circular coloured glass sunrise and sunset window at either end. The museum architects have kept a narrow, decorative strip of water down the centre where the main swimming pool would have been.
The original tiled changing cubicles down either side have been retained with glass showcases built into them, mostly now used to display ceramics. Sculptures on wooden boards line each side of the new pool. As you walk down the hall, the original function of the building is occasionally invoked by the sounds of splashing and shrieking children in an echoing swimming bath: a nice touch.
The drama of this setting is definitely the most impressive 'wow factor' I have encountered in a museum since I first saw the main hall of Magna in Rotherham (which is not really a museum, of course).
The rest of the permanent exhibition galleries at La Piscine, particularly the fine art displays, are in much more conventional white cube room settings. Inevitably, perhaps, this makes you concentrate rather more on the collections, some of which are more interesting as social history documents than for their artistic qualities.
Many of the paintings here reflect the taste of the 19th century textile barons of Roubaix, which was clearly not dissimilar to their peers in Bradford, who built up the municipal collections now displayed at Cartwright Hall. You know the sort of thing: Victorian soft porn featuring semi-naked women in faux classical settings from Greek myths or exotic Oriental slave markets.
These contrast with rather worthy exercises in social realism: the workers at play watching a cockfight in 1880s Flanders or the construction of the Paris Metro in the 1890s.
The question which I never quite resolved was whether La Piscine is, in fact, any more than a clever re-presentation of a rather mediocre art collection in dramatic new architectural surroundings, or, even if that were true, if it matters.
There is certainly a touch of the Walsalls about it: a fashionable new 'cultural regeneration' museum that has won instant acclaim but is nowhere near as radical and groundbreaking as it thinks it is, and may struggle to get people back for a second visit. A flash in the pan? I hope not, and judging by the crowds on my Sunday afternoon visit, it is sustaining its popularity at present and making Roubaix a cultural destination in a way that it probably never has been before.
Roubaix is still the textile capital of France, but now majors on distribution rather than production. Clearly the most important part of the museum's collection is not its fine art but its fabric samples and clothing, which span a long period from Coptic Egypt to contemporary creations from leading French and international fashion and textile designers (unlike French supermarkets, which never seem to stock any foreign wines on principle, La Piscine has recently added Paul Smith and Issey Miyake to its collections of Dior, Chanel and Comme des Garçons).
There was a temporary exhibition of costume when I visited where you could have your photograph taken in some of this season's fashions, but La Piscine's real value in this area seems to be as an accessible archive for students and researchers.
To round off your visit don't miss the central courtyard, once a rose garden and now formally laid out as a jardin des plants, reflecting the textile industry with flax, mulberry and the like.
This is overlooked by a terrace on which to sit and sample the museum's café/restaurant, run by Meert, Lille's most celebrated patisserie and tea room (you must also visit the original shop in town, with its original 1839 decor, where they serve the most amazing hot chocolate and cakes).
To get the most out of a visit to Lille and Roubaix, I recommend taking the handy pocket sized Bradt Mini Guide by Laurence Phillips (Bradt Travel Guides Ltd, 2004), who is enthusiastic, well-informed - particularly on restaurants and cultural facilities.
There is also a superb new English language edition of an Architectural Guide to the Lille Metropolitan Area (Le Passage Paris-New York Editions 2004), available from the main tourist office in the centre of Lille.
Interesting though it is, the architecture of Lille Metropole comes nowhere near the range and quality of that found in Liverpool. (The latter has just achieved the prestigious accolade of World Heritage Site status for its docklands and central townscape areas, which include all the main Liverpool Museum sites.)
In this respect at least, our next Capital of Culture can more than match Lille well in advance of its big year, with two excellent guides to its architectural heritage available. The late Professor Quentin Hughes' final publication, Liverpool, City of Architecture (The Bluecoat Press 1999), expertly written and beautifully photographed, has just been joined by the appearance of the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Liverpool (Yale 2004).
Although Liverpool Museums will presumably have completed their current major refurbishment programme by 2008, it would seem appropriate for the city to highlight its exceptional architectural heritage as a major theme in its Capital of Culture programme. Sadly, Liverpool's track record at using cultural projects to jump-start regeneration is patchy at best. Remember the much-hyped Garden Festival in the 1980s: what impact did that have, if any?
I do hope we are all lured to Merseyside in four years' time to visit and support some imaginative cultural initiatives which will make a real and lasting difference to the city. I'll only start to worry if some bright spark of a consultant suggests renaming Lime Street station after one of the Beatles. mj
Glasgow and its museums got a considerable boost from its year in the spotlight. Liverpool is hoping for the same, although the sudden cancellation of Will Alsop's wacky Fourth Grace project means there is now no chance of achieving the Bilbao effect of a new cultural building, transforming the image of a run-down port city, in the way that Frank Gehry's iconic Guggenheim Museum has done in Spain.
An embarrassing loss of nerve like this would never happen in France either, as those holding the purse strings in Liverpool would discover if they checked out Lille to look at its approach to culture based regeneration.
With the recently improved Eurostar schedules, Lille is now only 1 hour 40 minutes from London by train (OK, it's a bit longer from Liverpool) and has a lot to recommend it for anyone interested in a combined cultural, architectural and foodie weekend.
There are thousands of special arts and cultural events and activities taking place in Lille during 2004 (go to www.lille2004.com before planning a trip). But even if you choose to ignore the busy, changing programme there are two particularly impressive museum and gallery developments that deserve a visit.
First, the monumental Palais des Beaux Arts (Fine Arts Museum). This was built in the 1890s and reopened in 1997 by President Chirac following a radical internal renovation and extension by architects Jean-Marc Ibos and Myrto Vitart.
Their designs included opening up the huge central atrium space and creating an underground temporary exhibition hall, top-lit through a sheet of water from the forecourt above. This sculpture forecourt is closed on one side by a new 'blade' administration block with a mirrored glass grid facade, which dramatically reflects the old building.
The new setting is impressive, but so too is the museum's rehung collection, which is said to be second only, in France, to the Louvre. Expect to see plenty of Raphaels, Rubens, Goyas, impressionists, Picassos and Rodin's Burghers of Calais, among others. According to my guidebook, many of the paintings were restored at the National Gallery in London in the 1990s after being personally escorted over on the Eurostar by the chief curator.
My own favourite exhibits here were not the paintings but an amazing collection of historic models of 19 key towns in late 17th century northern France and Flanders. These were made for the architect Vauban to show his master Louis XIV how he planned to fortify the Sun King's newly acquired possessions, including Lille and Calais. Don't miss these finely detailed miniatures, which form a dramatic display taking up more than half the refurbished vaults of the museum.
After seeing the Palais des Beaux Arts, take a trip out of town to La Piscine, the new Museum of Art and Industry in Roubaix. The Lille conurbation extends north-eastwards from France across to Belgium, less than 10km away.
About halfway between Lille and the border is Roubaix, technically a separate town but now part of Lille Metropole. The continuous built-up urban area is linked by a recently refurbished century-old tramway and the slightly scary VAL automated metro, which whisks you underground to Roubaix from the centre of Lille in about 20 minutes.
Sit in the front seats for the full subterranean rollercoaster experience of the metro one way, then come back on the tram for a more leisurely overground ride along the Grand Boulevard, through Lille's early 20th century garden suburb and alongside the 18th century landscaped Parc Barbieux.
Roubaix is to Lille as Bradford is to Leeds and, appropriately enough, all four of these textile towns are twinned. Like Bradford, Roubaix's glory days were at the end of the 19th century when it was known as the town of a thousand chimneys because of its textile factories.
Now Roubaix is successfully remodelling itself as a post-industrial city with an ambitious reworking of its urban fabric. This includes extensive refurbishment and new use, rather than demolition, of a number of key historic buildings.
The outstanding example of this is La Piscine, a stunning art deco municipal swimming pool and baths complex built in 1928-32. Closed in 1985, the site has been converted with great style into an art and textile museum, which opened two years ago.
The architect, Jean-Paul Philippon, worked on the conversion of the long disused Gare d'Orsay in Paris into the spectacular Musee d'Orsay of 19th century decorative arts in the 1980s. His conversion of La Piscine shows similar inventiveness.
The atmosphere and character of a building designed for a completely different purpose has been retained but adaptations have been made to suit its new use as a museum and give it a creative twist.
It is the sort of thing the French are rather good at but would probably be scuppered in this country by a rigid application of building regulations and the listing process. I can't imagine a similar museum conversion ever being accepted as the salvation of the wonderful Victoria Baths in Manchester that won the BBC Restoration programme last year, but you never know.
The heart of La Piscine is the original barrel-vaulted pool hall, which has a huge semi circular coloured glass sunrise and sunset window at either end. The museum architects have kept a narrow, decorative strip of water down the centre where the main swimming pool would have been.
The original tiled changing cubicles down either side have been retained with glass showcases built into them, mostly now used to display ceramics. Sculptures on wooden boards line each side of the new pool. As you walk down the hall, the original function of the building is occasionally invoked by the sounds of splashing and shrieking children in an echoing swimming bath: a nice touch.
The drama of this setting is definitely the most impressive 'wow factor' I have encountered in a museum since I first saw the main hall of Magna in Rotherham (which is not really a museum, of course).
The rest of the permanent exhibition galleries at La Piscine, particularly the fine art displays, are in much more conventional white cube room settings. Inevitably, perhaps, this makes you concentrate rather more on the collections, some of which are more interesting as social history documents than for their artistic qualities.
Many of the paintings here reflect the taste of the 19th century textile barons of Roubaix, which was clearly not dissimilar to their peers in Bradford, who built up the municipal collections now displayed at Cartwright Hall. You know the sort of thing: Victorian soft porn featuring semi-naked women in faux classical settings from Greek myths or exotic Oriental slave markets.
These contrast with rather worthy exercises in social realism: the workers at play watching a cockfight in 1880s Flanders or the construction of the Paris Metro in the 1890s.
The question which I never quite resolved was whether La Piscine is, in fact, any more than a clever re-presentation of a rather mediocre art collection in dramatic new architectural surroundings, or, even if that were true, if it matters.
There is certainly a touch of the Walsalls about it: a fashionable new 'cultural regeneration' museum that has won instant acclaim but is nowhere near as radical and groundbreaking as it thinks it is, and may struggle to get people back for a second visit. A flash in the pan? I hope not, and judging by the crowds on my Sunday afternoon visit, it is sustaining its popularity at present and making Roubaix a cultural destination in a way that it probably never has been before.
Roubaix is still the textile capital of France, but now majors on distribution rather than production. Clearly the most important part of the museum's collection is not its fine art but its fabric samples and clothing, which span a long period from Coptic Egypt to contemporary creations from leading French and international fashion and textile designers (unlike French supermarkets, which never seem to stock any foreign wines on principle, La Piscine has recently added Paul Smith and Issey Miyake to its collections of Dior, Chanel and Comme des Garçons).
There was a temporary exhibition of costume when I visited where you could have your photograph taken in some of this season's fashions, but La Piscine's real value in this area seems to be as an accessible archive for students and researchers.
To round off your visit don't miss the central courtyard, once a rose garden and now formally laid out as a jardin des plants, reflecting the textile industry with flax, mulberry and the like.
This is overlooked by a terrace on which to sit and sample the museum's café/restaurant, run by Meert, Lille's most celebrated patisserie and tea room (you must also visit the original shop in town, with its original 1839 decor, where they serve the most amazing hot chocolate and cakes).
To get the most out of a visit to Lille and Roubaix, I recommend taking the handy pocket sized Bradt Mini Guide by Laurence Phillips (Bradt Travel Guides Ltd, 2004), who is enthusiastic, well-informed - particularly on restaurants and cultural facilities.
There is also a superb new English language edition of an Architectural Guide to the Lille Metropolitan Area (Le Passage Paris-New York Editions 2004), available from the main tourist office in the centre of Lille.
Interesting though it is, the architecture of Lille Metropole comes nowhere near the range and quality of that found in Liverpool. (The latter has just achieved the prestigious accolade of World Heritage Site status for its docklands and central townscape areas, which include all the main Liverpool Museum sites.)
In this respect at least, our next Capital of Culture can more than match Lille well in advance of its big year, with two excellent guides to its architectural heritage available. The late Professor Quentin Hughes' final publication, Liverpool, City of Architecture (The Bluecoat Press 1999), expertly written and beautifully photographed, has just been joined by the appearance of the Pevsner Architectural Guide to Liverpool (Yale 2004).
Although Liverpool Museums will presumably have completed their current major refurbishment programme by 2008, it would seem appropriate for the city to highlight its exceptional architectural heritage as a major theme in its Capital of Culture programme. Sadly, Liverpool's track record at using cultural projects to jump-start regeneration is patchy at best. Remember the much-hyped Garden Festival in the 1980s: what impact did that have, if any?
I do hope we are all lured to Merseyside in four years' time to visit and support some imaginative cultural initiatives which will make a real and lasting difference to the city. I'll only start to worry if some bright spark of a consultant suggests renaming Lime Street station after one of the Beatles. mj
