Every design for Tourcoing

Tourcoing made its fortune from textiles during the industrial revolution, growing alongside its neighbour Roubaix into one of the great mill towns of northern France, right on the Belgian border. Locals still call it the city of the Broutteux, and the town has a battle to its name as well: at the Battle of Tourcoing, French forces under Charles Pichegru defeated a combined British and Austrian army during the Revolutionary Wars, an episode recalled by the Monument de la Bataille de Tourcoing.

The Maison Folie Hospice d’Havré holds the town's longest memory, a medieval hospice whose cloister and chapel date from the seventeenth century. Close by, the Musée des Beaux-Arts Eugène Leroy and the Musée du Carillon give the centre its art and its music, while the Church of St Christopher, built in stone and brick, counts among the finest Neo-Gothic buildings in the Nord.

Its bell tower, hung with more than eighty bells, rises over the flat Flanders plain: the first thing you look for when Tourcoing comes into view.