The Grand'Place and the Déesse column

Place du Général-de-Gaulle is the Grand'Place to everyone who lives here, and it is the one square in France that looks Flemish rather than French: gabled fronts in red brick and gold sandstone, the 1653 Vieille Bourse along the east side, the Déesse column in the middle and the 1920s belfry of the Chamber of Commerce spiking up behind the roofs. Stand with your back to the Furet du Nord and the whole run of facades falls into a diagonal; step to the column and it becomes a symmetrical portrait frame.

The square faces open sky and is lit all day, which is unusual and useful. Early morning gives you the paving before the café terraces are set out and before the trams and buses of Rue Nationale get going. The last hour of light warms the sandstone into real gold. Overcast is genuinely fine here — northern light is soft, the brick keeps its colour and faces need no fill.

It is a working city centre, not a monument: there are always people, always a bus, always a delivery van. Compose tight enough to cut them out, or shoot early. From late November the Christmas market puts a wooden village and a big wheel across the square, which changes the picture completely and is worth planning for either way.

Everything else is within three minutes on foot — the Vieille Bourse courtyard through the arch, Place du Théâtre and the opera house behind it, and the brick lanes of Vieux Lille one street north.