www.explorearras.com. Named for its famous tapestries (from the Italian arazzi), the market town of Arras is arranged around two splendid squares lined with arcaded and gabled 17th-18thC Flemish town houses.

The larger of the two, Grand’ Place, is linked by a short street to Place des Héros and the 15thC Hôtel de Ville, a thoroughly Flamboyant affair, its steep slate roof pierced with mini dormers and topped by a belfry from which a carillon strikes the quarters. You can climb the belfry for a bird’s-eye view. See www.explorearras.com for information about guided tours beneath the city centre around a network of historic underground passages used as shelters during the First World War. To the north, the stately 18thC former Benedictine Abbaye de Saint-Vaast houses several Arras tapestries in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, place de la Madeleine, see  www.arras.fr.

Down in the Basse Ville, Sir Edwin Lutyens’s Mémorial Britannique commemorates 36,000 missing soldiers from the First World War. A short walk away, across boulevard Charles-de-Gaulle at the foot of the Vauban citadel, the Mur des Fusilles is a Second World War monument to 200 Resistance fighters, mostly miners, executed by firing squad in 1942.

See also Vimy Ridge, this section.