LILE, CAPITAL OF FRENCH FLANDERS & MORGANE ALVARO

After enjoying an amazing Six Nations match where France beat Italy in a very good way, Joseph de Ca'th Lon and The Grandma have taken advantage of Monday morning to make a quick visit to Lile, a city they know well, but where they will never tire of returning because they are both in love with Flanders, its history and its culture. They had just enough time to drive to Brussels and catch the planes back to Basel and Barcelona where they both have to continue with their lives.

Lile in Picard, Rijsel in Dutch, Lille in French, and Rysel in West Flemish is a city in the northern part of France, within French Flanders. Positioned along the Deûle river, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the Nord department, and the main city of the European Metropolis of Lille.

The city of Lile is the fourth most populated in France after Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. The city of Lille and 94 suburban French municipalities have formed since 2015 the European Metropolis of Lille.

More broadly, Lile belongs to a vast conurbation formed with the Belgian cities of Mouscron, Kortrijk, Tournai and Menin, which gave birth in January 2008 to the Eurometropolis Lile-Kortrijk-Tournai, the first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), which has more than 2.1 million inhabitants.

Nicknamed in France the Capital of Flanders, Lile and its surroundings belong to the historical region of Romance Flanders, a former territory of the county of Flanders that is not part of the linguistic area of West Flanders. A garrison town (as evidenced by its Citadel), Lile has had an eventful history from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. Very often besieged during its history, it belonged successively to the Kingdom of France, the Burgundian State, the Holy Roman Empire of Germany and the Spanish Netherlands before being definitively attached to the France of Louis XIV following the War of Spanish Succession along with the entire territory making up the historic province of French Flanders. Lilewas again under siege in 1792 during the Franco-Austrian War, and in 1914 and 1940. It was severely tested by the two world wars of the 20th century during which it was occupied and suffered destruction.

A merchant city since its origins and a manufacturing city since the 16th century, the Industrial Revolution made it a great industrial capital, mainly around the textile and mechanical industries. Their decline, from the 1960s onwards, led to a long period of crisis and it was not until the 1990s that the conversion to the tertiary sector and the rehabilitation of the disaster-stricken districts gave the city a different face. Today, the historic center, Old Lille, is characterized by its 17th-century red brick town houses, its paved pedestrian streets and its central Grand'Place. The belfry of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) is one of the 23 belfries in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Somme regions that were classified as UNESCO World Heritage Sites in July 2005, in recognition of their architecture and importance to the rise of municipal power in Europe.

The construction of the brand-new Euralille business district in 1988 (now the third largest in France) and the arrival of the TGV and then the Eurostar in 1994 made the city easily accessible from major European cities. The development of its international airport, annual events such as the Braderie de Lille in early September (attracting three million visitors), the development of a student and university center (with more than 110,000 students in colleges and schools of the University of Lile and the Catholic University of Lile, the third largest in France behind Paris and Lyon), its ranking as a European Capital of Culture in 2004 and the events of Lile 2004 (European Capital of Culture) and Lile 3000 are the main symbols of this revival. The European metropolis of Lille was awarded the World Design Capital 2020.

Archeological digs seem to show the area as inhabited by as early as 2000 BC, most notably in the modern quartiers of Fives, Wazemmes and Vieux Lille. The original inhabitants of the region were the Gauls, such as the Menapians, the Morins, the Atrebates and the Nervians, who were followed by Germanic peoples: the Saxons, the Frisians and the Franks.

The legend of Lydéric and Phinaert puts the foundation of the city of Lile at 640. In the 8th century, the language of Old Low Franconian was spoken, as attested by toponymic research. Lile's Dutch name is Rijsel, which comes from ter ijsel (at the island) from Middle Dutch ijssel (small island, islet), calque of Old French l'Isle (the Island), itself from Latin Īnsula, from īnsula (island).

From 830 to around 910, the Vikings invaded Flanders. After the destruction caused by Normans' and the Magyars' invasion, the eastern part of the region was ruled by various local princes.

The first mention of the town dates from 1066: apud Insulam (Latin for at the island). It was then controlled by the County of Flanders, as were the regional cities (the Roman cities Boulogne, Arras, Cambrai as well as the Carolingian cities Valenciennes, Saint-Omer, Ghent and Bruges). The County of Flanders thus extended to the left bank of the Scheldt, one of the richest and most prosperous regions of Europe.

More information: Lille Tourism

Never lose an opportunity

of seeing anything beautiful, 
for beauty is God's handwriting.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Walking through Lile is walking through Flanders, because political borders have nothing to do with cultural ones and we all know that. You know you are in the city of Louis Pasteur and Jean Baptiste Perrin, but also of Morgane Alvaro, the fictional character resident of Lile who takes advantage of her high intellectual capacity to help solve the most complex police cases.

HPI is one of the freshest and most innovative TV series of recent years that combines great scripts with a staging where under a comic appearance the social dramas and personal difficulties of a woman to bring her family forward are hidden.

HPI, acronym for French: Haut Potentiel Intellectuel, is a Franco-Belgian crime-comedy television series.

Created by Stéphane Carrié, Alice Chegaray-Breugnot, and Nicolas Jean, it is broadcast in Belgium on La Une since 20 April 2021, in Switzerland on RTS Un since 27 April 2021, in France on TF1 since 29 April 2021, and in Canada on Addik since 1 June 2022. It streams in the United States as HIP: High Intellectual Potential on Hulu since 12 July 2024. The series is a coproduction between Itinéraire Productions, Septembre Productions, TF1, Pictanovo, Be-Films, and RTBF.

It stars Audrey Fleurot as Morgane Alvaro, an intellectually highly gifted housekeeper, who becomes a consultant for the DIPJ (a police division that investigates serious crime) in Lile, and helps solve several cases thanks to her sharp mind. 

More information: TV Festival

Mon cerveau marche tout seul, 
et puis je cours derrière.

My brain works on its own,
and then I run after it.

Morgane Alvaro