John Hillman gives us a snapshot of Lille, the capital of the Nord Pas de Calais

There is something quite special about border towns, perhaps a sense of peril through proximity that you can’t help but pick up on whenever you visit a place like Lille.

The ancient city of Lille, the capital of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, did not actually become part of France until 1668 when it was conquered by King Lois XIV

Known as the Sun King – presumably because of the ‘sun-king feeling’ everybody had whenever the randy little toad appeared on the horizon – he set about winning over the hearts and minds of the prosperous townsfolk with a series of impressive public works, such as the Citadel and the quartiers of Saint-André and la Madeleine.

But the curse of geography had been placed on this city when the first inhabitants turned up around 2000 BC and, Sun King or no Sun King, the proximities of the English Channel, the Germanic northern regions of Europe and the fault line of the Christian faith ensured that this town would remain a perilous place to live throughout modern history.

It must come as quite a relief to the inhabitants of Lille to now be living in a benign part of a reassuringly secular Europe, which hopefully got all the fighting out of its system last century.

Lille celebrates this fact by now being a city of eternal youth thanks to the 97,000 odd students that study here each year, and by hosting France’s principal comic festival every November. Well, having been invaded and liberated more times than a Hentai Heroine itself, it comes as no surprise that it identifies with the ‘hero-to-the-rescue’ theme that underpins every comic book ever written.

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