Every design for Dunkerque

Dunkirk lies on the North Sea, a short way from the Belgian border, on a plain so flat that the whole town sits only a few metres above the water it was won from. Its name comes from West Flemish and means the church in the dunes, and until the middle of the last century French Flemish was still widely spoken in its streets.

The position has shaped everything. As the northernmost sub-prefecture in France, Dunkirk gave the country its own saying, from Dunkirk to Perpignan, meaning the whole of France. Around it spreads the Blootland, the maritime plain of Flanders, crossed by drainage canals called wateringues that carry water out to sea. Its harbour is the third largest in France, and over the centuries the town passed between Flanders, Spain, England and France before it finally became French. Locals belong to the cité de Jean Bart, and every year the carnival brings the whole town into the streets.

For anyone who grew up here, the map holds the Beffroi de Dunkerque, the Musée Maritime et Portuaire and La Duchesse Anne, Saturday afternoons on the beach and the tide sliding back over the sand.