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Credits & legal notice

Who runs this website, where the photos and information come from, and what happens to your data (nothing).

Required by French law

Legal notice

Publisher

Sébastien Deneux, in a personal capacity.

lens-tourisme.fr is a non-commercial, volunteer website with no advertising, created in 2005. It has no connection with the town of Lens, the tourist office or the Louvre-Lens.

Host

Cloudflare, Inc.
101 Townsend Street
San Francisco, CA 94107, USA
cloudflare.com

Personal data

This website sets no cookies, uses no analytics and collects no data.

Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts: your browser therefore sends its IP address to Google's servers, as with any website that uses them.

Intellectual property. The texts were written for this website. The photos belong to their authors, credited below, and may not be reused without their permission. Historical facts and practical information come from the sources listed below.
Thanks to the photographers

Photo credits

Sébastien Deneux

  • The site of pit no. 9 before the Louvre-Lens, and its signs (October 2005)
  • The twin slag heaps and the Base 11/19 (August and September 2005)
  • The “Louvre” signs in Lens and Liévin, town-centre works (2005-2006)
  • The Grands Bureaux of the Lens Mining Company (December 2005)
  • The Arras belfry illuminations (2005)
  • Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and the Ring of Remembrance (June 2024)
  • The Louvre-Lens and its park (December 2024)
  • The Canadian National Vimy Memorial in the snow (January 2025)
  • Wissant beach and Cap Blanc-Nez (May 2025)

René Bellanger

“The wandering miner”, a contributor to the website since 2005: the squares, streets, gardens and market of Arras, the Wall of the Executed, the Berck kites, the food markets of Artois.

Francis Bocquet

Aerial photographer: the 2005 aerial view of Lens before the Louvre-Lens was built, and the views of the building site in March 2010. See his work on Photos aériennes Bocquet.

Old postcards

From the collection shown on the Neuville-Saint-Vaast Heritage website, for heritage and documentary purposes.

Illustrations and fonts

The “from slag heaps to the sea” drawing on the home page and the site icon were created for lens-tourisme.fr. Fonts: Big Shoulders Display, Source Serif 4 and Inter, under the free SIL Open Font License.

Where the information comes from

Sources

Every fact was checked against official sources in October 2026. The texts were written for this website from these sources.

Mining heritage

Louvre-Lens

  • Louvre-Lens: official website, press area, 2025 annual report
  • Musée du Louvre (Liévin conservation centre)
  • This website's own archives (2005-2010) for the chronicle

Remembrance

Visiting

Statistics and press

  • INSEE (French statistics office)
  • Regional press (La Voix du Nord, Horizon actu, France 3 Hauts-de-France), for cross-checking
  • Wikipedia, for cross-checking only
Since 2005

Acknowledgements

This website was designed and built by Sébastien Deneux.

Thanks to René Bellanger, whose walks and photos brought the site to life, to Francis Bocquet for his aerial views, and to the readers who, since 2005, have shared their memories and comments on the Louvre's arrival in Lens.

Spotted a mistake, have a detail to add or a photo to share? They are always welcome.