Why Lille is the perfect European winter break

It’s often overlooked as nothing more than a stop on the Eurostar but lively Lille offers excellent shopping, engrossing culture and a bewildering choice of restaurants and bars (thanks, in no small part, to its 100,000-strong student population).

The biggest city in French Flanders, the Flemish flavour is strong here, with handsome crenellated buildings crowding the elegant Grand Place and 17th century townhouses lining the cobbled streets of the old town, Vieux-Lille. There’s an extra sparkle to the city until December 27, with the large Christmas market taking over Place Rihour.

Even if trinkets and baubles aren’t your thing, it’s hard to resist tartiflettes oozing with cheese and bacon, mulled wine and cider, and waffles dripping with chocolate sauce. In Grand Place/Place du Général de Gaulle a winter wonderland has filled the square with fairy-tale chalets, a huge Christmas tree and a giant wheel that offers views of a city smothered in lights.

Where to stay

On the eastern edge of Vieux-Lille, the new four-star L’Arbre Voyageur hides behind a startling steel façade covering the former Polish consulate. Inside, tastefully contemporary rooms have free mini-bars of soft drinks and snacks. There’s a superb restaurant, Jane, a burger bar and an on-site bakery. Doubles from €152, room only.

What to eat and drink

Rue de Gand in Vieux-Lille already has a dizzying range of restaurants, and last year friendly Chez Raoul (00 33 361 50 72 55, no web) joined its ranks. It’s typical of the estaminet style of restaurant found in Lille — all cosy, cluttered interiors and regional food at decent prices. The mussels are especially good — try them the Lillois way with pungent Maroilles cheese.

Tucked away down little Rue St-Etienne is buzzing Le Barbue d’Anvers, where you can choose either the book-lined mezzanine level or an Arabian Nights-style cellar.

Start with a slowly cooked egg smothered in Maroilles cheese and lardons before making an attempt at finishing a carbonnade flamande, a gorgeously rich Flemish stew of beef cooked in beer. L’Idiot (00 33 3 20 49 70 84, no web) is a cheerful brasserie featuring mostly organic produce in a deliberately limited menu.

It changes every week but can include a deliciously succulent pork version of carbonnade flamande. Among the student haunts on Rue Royale is delightfully old-fashioned L’Illustration, where people play chess and backgammon or listen to the occasional live singer.

As Flanders is the land of beer rather than wine, La Capsule (00 33 3 20 4214 75, no web) is the place to try the various local heady brews. More than 20 mainly French and Belgian craft beers are on tap in a convivial bar in a quiet street in Vieux-Lille. If rum is more to your taste, try the cocktails at La Pirogue (00 33 3 20 3170 82, no web), just around the corner. There’s a big selection of cocktails at reasonable prices, as well as beers and spirits.

Where to shop

If you like food and cooking, you’ll feel at home on Rue Esquermoise in Vieux-Lille. First stop should be Méert at No 27, which has been making exquisite treats since 1761.

The one to look out for is the “gaufre Méert”, which looks and sounds simple — two very thin waffles sandwiching Madagascar vanilla cream — but the taste is instantly addictive. Carry on further north up the street — past the Le Creuset, Bialetti and La Bovida cook shops — to reach Les Bons Pâturages, with walls of cheese sourced from all over France.

What to see and do

Hop on the metro for the 20-minute journey to Roubaix, home to Lille’s most enchanting museum. La Piscine is housed in an Art Deco swimming baths, topped and tailed by vivid sunburst stained-glass windows. The old tiled changing rooms make wonderfully odd galleries for paintings, ceramics, sculptures, vintage clothes and household objects.

A more conventional but no less engaging setting for art, the Palais des Beaux-Arts is in a sweeping Belle Epoque building as grand as the exhibits. It’s one of France’s largest museums, and its stately galleries include works by Brueghel, Rubens, Delacroix, Monet and Seurat, among many others. Head to the basement for displays of antiquities and medieval treasures as well as enormous 18th-century relief maps of the region.

Details: Lille

Eurostar has 10 trains a day to Lille — the journey takes 80-90 minutes. Otherwise, DFDS has 12 crossings a day from Dover to Dunkirk, an hour’s drive away.