Every design for Douai

In 1909 the airfield at La Brayelle, on the edge of Douai, hosted the world's first aeronautical meeting, one more first for a town that has spent its history changing hands between the counts of Flanders, the Dukes of Burgundy, the Habsburgs and France. It was the seat of the Parliament of Flanders, a textile market in the Middle Ages and, for much of the First World War, a town under German occupation.

Daily life still runs to the rhythm of the Beffroi. Its Gothic tower, begun in 1380, carries a carillon of 62 bells that chime every quarter-hour, and on Saturday mornings someone plays them from a keyboard. Below it, the Scarpe runs through the centre in its canal, the town buses cost nothing, and Lille is less than twenty minutes away by train. On a wet Sunday there is the Musée de la Chartreuse; on a dry one, a walk out past the Porte d'Arras or into the marshes of the Wagnonville nature reserve.

If you grew up within earshot of those bells, you can tell the quarter-hour without looking at a clock. This map is for you, wherever you hear them from now.