Every design for Arras

Can you picture the Beffroi from the Place des Héros without closing your eyes? Anyone who grew up in Arras can. That view is the town's front room: two Baroque squares, the Place des Héros and the Grand'Place, watched over by a belfry listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an ensemble with no real equivalent anywhere in Europe.

Arras lies in the Artois, on a broad chalk plateau where the Scarpe and the Crinchon meet, close enough to Lille to feel its pull and far enough to keep its own character. It is the prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais and the department's second town after Calais. The chalk gave it a nickname, the white town, and a hidden second city: the boves, a maze of tunnels beneath the streets. Above ground there is the Citadelle d'Arras built by Vauban, the remains of Roman Nemetacum, and the Arras Memorial, where the First World War is never far away.

Growing up here means knowing those squares as ordinary ground, a place to cross on the way to school. A map of Arras holds all of that in a few streets.