Lens, forty thousand inhabitants in the far north of France (in France geography is upside down, and when it comes to teasing the “southerners” are those of the north), for 130 years the subjects of the King of Spain who then ruled over Flanders, is a former town mining, which today seeks its future in cultural tourism.
So much so that since 2012, since it was inaugurated, the city prides itself on hosting a branch of one of the most famous museums in the world, or the Louvre in Paris, which is about 200 kilometers. In short, in Lens French cultural institutions have been trying to replicate what has succeeded in Bilbao with its Guggenheim.
The Louvre-Lens offers many temporary exhibitions and the Grand Gallery, where the works from the collections of the Louvre Museum are on display in a new way: abandoning the traditional organization into sectors and thematic rooms, the works of art are presented here in a ‘single vast gallery of over 3,000 m2, without any division. In this way, rather than emphasize what divides and drives away, the Louvre-Lens emphasizes what unites artistic and cultural terms, the different civilizations.
Other attractions of Lens, is the train station, whose profile resembles that of a steam engine, the right to Jean Perrin Faculty of Science, example of imposing industrial buildings, the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, which follows the style of the English stadium, and the city center, with Place Jean-Jaures, the intersection of the two main shopping street (Boulevard Basly and Rue Lanoy), which is the real heart of Lens.