Slag heaps rising to 186 metres, a Louvre built on a former colliery, the ridges of Vimy and Lorette, and the sea an hour and a half away. The Pas-de-Calais is well worth the detour.
For more than a century, life in Lens revolved around coal. The town was razed during the Great War and rebuilt, and its last pit closed in 1986, four years before coal mining ended across the whole basin. What remains is a unique landscape: slag heaps (terrils) turned into green hills, red-brick miners' housing estates (cités), headframes standing like monuments, and an Art Deco façade on every street corner.
Since 2012 this landscape has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That same year, the Louvre opened its branch on the site of a former colliery. Nearby, the ridges of Vimy and Lorette keep the memory of the Great War, and Arras, with its Flemish-style squares, is twenty minutes away.
This website has been around since 2005. It followed the Louvre's arrival in Lens step by step. Today it covers everything worth visiting in the area.
Climb the 11/19 slag heaps, wander through the miners' estates, admire the locomotive-shaped station and the Grands Bureaux.
02The museum today, and the story of how it came to Lens, from the bid to the opening.
03Vimy, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the Ring of Remembrance, the war cemeteries and the Arras quarries.
04Arras, Douai, Béthune, the countryside… and a trip out to the sea.
Few places bring together so many in such a small radius.
353 sites over 120 km: pits, headframes, slag heaps, miners' estates, schools, churches and trade union halls. Lens is one of its hearts.
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the German cemetery and the Czechoslovak cemetery at Neuville-Saint-Vaast, La Targette, the Loos Memorial… all a few kilometres from Lens.
Three civic towers, symbols of medieval town freedoms, each with its carillon. Douai's came second in the TV contest “Le Monument préféré des Français” (France's favourite monument) in 2024.
A five-pointed star nicknamed “la Belle Inutile” (the Beautiful Useless One), as it never came under siege. Free to walk around the bastions.
| When | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| February | International indoor athletics meeting, a world-class event since 1988 | Arena Stade couvert, Liévin |
| 9 April | Commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge (9 April 1917) | Vimy Memorial |
| April-May | Printemps de l'Art déco (Art Deco Spring), every year: tours and events around the façades of the 1920s and 1930s | Lens and the region |
| May | La Route du Louvre (2nd Sunday in May): marathon from Seclin, 10 km race and walk, finishing in the museum park | Finish at Louvre-Lens |
| Late June or early July | Main Square Festival | Arras citadel |
| Mid-July | Fêtes de Gayant, the festival of Douai's giant | Douai |
| September | Journées européennes du patrimoine (European Heritage Days): Grands Bureaux, Maison syndicale (miners' union hall), behind the scenes at Louvre-Lens… | Everywhere |
| 11 November | Armistice Day | Lorette, Vimy, Ring of Remembrance |
| Early December | St Barbara's Day, the miners' festival, and the Louvre-Lens anniversary (opened on 4 December 2012) | Mining sites of Lens-Liévin |
These events come back every year, but exact dates vary: check with the organisers before you travel.
This website was born in July 2005, a few months after Lens was chosen to host the first Louvre outside Paris. Its stated aim at the time was to let visitors follow the project as it took shape, right up to the museum's opening. It followed the architecture competition, explored the still-wooded site of pit no. 9 and photographed the first “Louvre” signs put up around town.
It then welcomed the walks of René Bellanger, “le mineur en balade” (the wandering miner), whose photos of Arras and the coast still illustrate these pages. The museum has been open since 2012, and the website has had a makeover to present everything there is to visit around Lens.