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.

[8] More broadly, Lille 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 Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai, the first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), which has more than 2.1 million inhabitants.

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.

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.

[9] 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 put Lille at the heart of the major European capitals.

[10] Archeological digs seem to show the area as inhabited by as early as 2000 BC,[citation needed] 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.

In 1225, the street performer and juggler Bertrand Cordel, doubtlessly encouraged by local lords, tried to pass himself off as Baldwin I of Constantinople (the father of Jeanne of Flanders), who had disappeared at the battle of Adrianople.

Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, was even more powerful than the King of France, and made Lille an administrative and financial capital.

On 17 February 1454, one year after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, Philip the Good organised a Pantagruelian banquet at his Lille palace, the still-celebrated "Feast of the Pheasant".

At the same time (1581), at the call of Elizabeth I of England, the north of the Seventeen Provinces, having gained a Protestant majority, successfully revolted and formed the Dutch Republic.

[13] In 1667, Louis XIV of France (the Sun King) successfully laid siege to Lille, resulting in it becoming French in 1668 under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, provoking discontent among the citizens of the prosperous city.

A number of important public works undertaken between 1667 and 1670, such as the Citadel (erected by Vauban), or the creation of the quartiers of Saint-André and la Madeleine, enabled the French king to gradually gain the confidence of his new subjects in Lille, some of whom continued to feel Flemish, but they had always spoken the Romance Picard language.

The "Column of the Goddess", erected in 1842 in the "Grand-Place" (officially named Place du Général-de-Gaulle), is a tribute to the city's resistance, led by Mayor François André-Bonte [fr].

In the early 19th century, Napoleon I's continental blockade against the United Kingdom led to Lille's textile industry developing even more fully.

Lille's occupation by the Germans began on 13 October 1914 after a ten-day siege and heavy shelling, which destroyed 882 apartment and office blocks and 1,500 houses, mostly around the railway station and in the centre.

[17] Lille was liberated by the Allies on 17 October 1918, when General Sir William Birdwood and his troops were welcomed by joyous crowds.

In 1936, the city's mayor, Roger Salengro, became Minister of the Interior of the Popular Front but eventually killed himself after right-wing groups led a slanderous campaign against him.

When Belgium was invaded, the citizens of Lille, still haunted by the events of World War I, began to flee the city in large numbers.

The départements of Nord and Pas-de-Calais (with the exception of the coast, notably Dunkirk) were for the most part liberated from 1 to 5 September 1944, by British, Canadian and Polish troops.

This, with the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 and the arrival of the Eurostar train put Lille at the centre of a triangle connecting Paris, London and Brussels.

The Euralille Centre was opened in 1994, and the remodeled district is now full of parks and modern buildings containing offices, shops and apartments.

[24] The population data in the table and graph to the left below refer to the commune of Lille proper in its borders since 2000, i.e. a municipal territory of 35 km2 (14 sq mi).

The conurbation forms the Métropole Européenne de Lille which is France's fourth-largest urban conglomeration with a 2016 population of over 1.15 million.

Lille features an array of architectural styles with various amounts of Flemish influence, including the use of brown and red brick.

In addition, many residential neighborhoods, especially in Greater Lille, consist of attached two- to three-storey houses aligned in a row, with narrow gardens in the back.

Many of the roads in the inner city (including much of the old town) are closed and local shops, residents and traders set up stalls in the street.

The Métropole Européenne de Lille has a mixed mode public transport system, which is considered one of the most modern in the whole of France.

The French TGV network also puts it only 1 hour from Paris and 38 minutes from Brussels[36] and connects it to other major centres in France such as Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse.