Vieux Lille — Rue de la Monnaie and the Place aux Oignons

North of the Grand'Place the streets narrow and the city changes register. Rue de la Monnaie runs up toward the Hospice Comtesse between seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fronts in dark red brick banded with pale stone, hung with painted and wrought-iron shop signs; off it, the Place aux Oignons is a tiny cobbled triangle of leaning houses that is the single most photographed corner of Vieux Lille and takes about four people to feel full.

The lanes are narrow, so direct sun only reaches the ground for an hour or two around midday and mostly you are working in soft shade — which is the point. Faces sit in even light against saturated brick, and a 35 or 50mm at head height keeps the doorways and signs readable behind the couple. Rain helps: wet cobbles double the colour of the brick and the streets empty.

Weekday mornings before ten are quiet. From noon the restaurants on Rue de la Monnaie and Rue Basse put tables out and the lanes fill; Saturday afternoons are the busiest of the week. Residents live behind these doors, so keep voices down and do not block a doorway for a set-up.

The loop takes about twenty minutes on foot: Rue de la Monnaie, the courtyard of the Hospice Comtesse, Place aux Oignons, Rue Basse, then out at the cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille, whose blank modern marble west front is a startling change of texture and a good last frame.