Published: 5 July 2026 | 14 min read
Hauts-de-France is the most underrated region in the country — there, we have said it. While travellers flock to Provence, the French Riviera, and the châteaux of the Loire, the north quietly offers some of Europe's greatest Gothic architecture, the most powerful WWI memorial sites on the Western Front, a coastline of staggering beauty, world-class art museums, and a food and beer culture unlike anywhere else in France. Here are the 15 absolute best things to do, from the essential icons to the hidden corners that reward the curious traveller.
The Cathédrale Notre-Dame d'Amiens is not just the largest Gothic cathedral in France — it is, by interior volume (approximately 200,000 cubic metres), the largest complete Gothic cathedral in the world. Built between 1220 and 1270 — an astonishingly fast 50 years for a building of this scale — its 42-metre-high nave is a triumph of medieval engineering that seems to defy gravity. The west façade features three deeply carved portals: the central Portal of the Last Judgement, with its famous Beau Dieu (Beautiful God) statue of Christ — considered by many scholars to be the single finest piece of 13th-century sculpture in existence. Inside, the 16th-century choir stalls with over 4,000 carved figures tell the story of the Bible in wood. In summer and at Christmas, the free Chroma light show projects the cathedral's original medieval polychromy onto the façade. Allow at least two hours, but three is better. Entry to the cathedral is free; the treasury and towers have modest charges.
Lille's old town — Vieux-Lille — is one of the most beautifully preserved Flemish-baroque urban quarters in Europe. Start at the Grand'Place (Place du Général-de-Gaulle), dominated by the ornate 17th-century Vieille Bourse, a quadrangle of 24 identical Flemish townhouses enclosing a courtyard that fills with chess players, second-hand book dealers, and tango dancers in summer. From here, follow Rue de la Monnaie and Rue Esquermoise into the pedestrian heart of the old town, where pastel-coloured 17th- and 18th-century townhouses house independent boutiques, artisan chocolatiers, and the legendary Méert patisserie (since 1761). Do not miss Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille Cathedral — its translucent marble façade by the engineer Peter Rice (who also worked on the Sydney Opera House) is unlike any other church front in the world. End in one of the estaminets of Rue de Gand for carbonnade flamande and a local beer.
The 17-kilometre coastal walk between the two great chalk headlands of the Côte d'Opale is one of the finest day walks in northern France. Cap Blanc-Nez (White Nose Cape) rises 134 metres above the Channel — a sheer chalk face crowned with an obelisk commemorating the Dover Patrol of the First World War. On clear days, the White Cliffs of Dover are clearly visible 34 kilometres across the Strait. The path south traces the cliff edge through wildflower meadows and past German coastal defence bunkers from the Second World War — remnants of the Atlantic Wall. Descending into the wide, sandy bay at Wissant, you can stop for moules-frites at one of the beachfront restaurants before climbing the gentler slopes of Cap Gris-Nez (Grey Nose Cape), where a lighthouse, a nature observatory for migratory birds, and the remains of a Tudor-era English fort mark the closest point of France to England. The entire walk takes 5–6 hours at a relaxed pace, with constant sea views and some of the best birdwatching in France.
The Thiepval Memorial — designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1932 — is the largest British war memorial in the world. Its 45-metre-high brick-and-stone arch rises from the gently rolling Picardy countryside, visible for miles across the former battlefield of the Somme. The memorial bears the names of 72,337 British and South African soldiers who died on the Somme between July 1915 and March 1918 and have no known grave — over 72,000 names carved into Portland stone panels wrapping around 16 piers. A small visitor centre tells the story of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, in which over one million men were killed or wounded in four and a half months. The memorial is profoundly moving regardless of nationality, and the view from the top of the memorial (reached by a narrow internal staircase, open on guided tours) stretches across the fields that swallowed an entire generation.
The Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial is the best-preserved WWI battlefield site on the Western Front. Unlike most battlefields, which were returned to agriculture after the war, this 30-hectare site was left as it was — shell craters, trench lines, and all — as a memorial to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, which was virtually annihilated here on 1 July 1916: of 801 men who went over the top, only 68 answered roll call the next morning. You can walk through the original trench system, stand where the Newfoundlanders stood, and look across No Man's Land at the German lines — the distance is terrifyingly short. A bronze caribou, the regiment's emblem, stands on a rocky outcrop overlooking the field. Canadian student guides provide excellent free tours that bring the personal stories to life. The nearby Ulster Tower, a replica of Helen's Tower in Département Down, commemorates the 36th (Ulster) Division and houses a small, poignant museum.
Arras possesses two of the most beautiful squares in Europe — the Grand'Place and Place des Héros — lined with 155 Flemish-baroque houses whose distinctive crow-stepped gables, arcaded ground floors, and warm sandstone façades create a harmonious architectural ensemble unique in France. The 75-metre belfry on the Place des Héros, rebuilt after its destruction in the First World War and crowned with a golden lion, is part of the UNESCO-listed Belfries of Belgium and France. The 326-step climb is rewarded with a panoramic view across the rooftops of Arras to the slag heaps of the mining basin beyond. Beneath the squares lies the Carrière Wellington — an extraordinary underground city of chalk tunnels where 24,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers lived in the week before the Battle of Arras in April 1917. The guided tour, complete with period recordings and a light-and-sound experience, is one of the most innovative museum experiences in France.
When the Musée du Louvre decided to create a satellite museum, it chose Lens — a former mining town in the heart of the Pas-de-Calais coal basin — and the result, opened in 2012, is one of the most remarkable museum buildings in Europe. Designed by the Japanese Pritzker Prize-winning firm SANAA, the museum is a low, transparent pavilion of glass and polished aluminium, set on a 20-hectare landscaped park built on a former pithead. The permanent collection, the Galerie du Temps, is a radical curatorial innovation: over 200 masterpieces from the Louvre's collections — from a 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue to Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" — are displayed in a single chronological sweep in one enormous, light-filled room with no dividing walls. You can walk from antiquity to the 19th century in 120 metres. Entry to the Galerie du Temps is free; temporary exhibitions are ticketed. The museum has been a catalyst for the regeneration of the mining basin, itself a UNESCO World Heritage site for its exceptional industrial landscape of pit-head frames, slag heaps, and mining villages.
The Château de Chantilly is the French château that many visitors to the Loire never discover — and it rivals anything in the Loire Valley. Set on a lake within 7,800 hectares of forest, the château comprises two wings: the Petit Château, built around 1560 for Anne de Montmorency, and the Grand Château, rebuilt after the French Revolution in the 1870s by Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Aumale. The Duke was the richest man in France and one of the greatest art collectors of the 19th century — the Musée Condé within the château houses the finest collection of Old Master paintings in France outside the Louvre, including three Raphaels (the largest collection in France), works by Botticelli, Poussin, Watteau, and Ingres, and the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, the most famous illuminated manuscript in the world. The gardens, designed by André Le Nôtre, feature grand canals, formal parterres, and the Anglo-Chinese garden with its rustic hamlet — a model for Marie Antoinette's later Hameau at Versailles. The Great Stables, built in 1719, are a masterpiece of 18th-century architecture and now house the Museum of the Horse, with live equestrian demonstrations.
The Baie de Somme is one of the most important estuaries in Europe — a 70-square-kilometre Ramsar-protected wetland that is home to France's largest harbour seal colony (over 600 individuals) and a crucial stopover for over 300 bird species on the East Atlantic Flyway. The best way to see the seals is from the Pointe du Hourdel, a shingle spit at the southern entrance to the bay where seals haul out on the sandbanks at low tide. For closer encounters, guided boat trips depart from Saint-Valery-sur-Somme and Le Crotoy, taking you within viewing distance (but at a respectful range) of the colony. The Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme — a heritage steam railway running 27 kilometres between Le Crotoy and Cayeux-sur-Mer — crosses the salt marshes and offers some of the best birdwatching from a moving train you will ever experience. Saint-Valery-sur-Somme itself, a medieval citadel town where William the Conqueror assembled his invasion fleet in 1066, has cobbled streets, rampart walks, and excellent seafood restaurants.
The Canadian National Vimy Memorial, designed by the sculptor Walter Seymour Allward and unveiled in 1936, is perhaps the single most powerful war memorial on the Western Front. Its twin pylons, representing Canada and France, rise 30 metres from the crest of Hill 145 — the highest point of Vimy Ridge and the objective of the Canadian Corps' assault on 9 April 1917. The assault was a pivotal moment: for the first time, all four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together, capturing the ridge at a cost of 10,602 casualties. The memorial site preserves shell craters, trench lines, and a section of tunnel. Young Canadian university students lead free guided tours that bring the site to life with extraordinary knowledge and passion. The figure of Canada Bereft — a female allegory of the nation gazing down at a symbolic tomb — is carved from a single 30-tonne block of Croatian limestone and is widely considered one of the finest examples of early 20th-century monumental sculpture.
The Hortillonnages — 300 hectares of floating market gardens criss-crossed by 65 kilometres of canals known as rieux — have been cultivated since the Middle Ages and are one of the most unusual urban landscapes in Europe. Historically, these small islands provided all the fresh vegetables for Amiens, with produce transported to the city's water market by flat-bottomed boat. Today, a handful of hortillons (market gardeners) still work the plots, and the best way to explore is aboard a silent electric boat from the Maison des Hortillonnages. The 45-minute guided tour glides through tunnels of weeping willows, past vividly painted garden sheds and flower-filled plots that change with the seasons. The International Garden Festival, held from May to October, invites landscape architects to create temporary gardens on selected plots. It is peaceful, surprisingly wild for a city-centre attraction, and unlike anything else in France.
In 1917, the British Army faced an impossible problem: how to launch a surprise attack on the heavily fortified German lines east of Arras. Their solution, borrowed from the medieval inhabitants of Arras who had quarried the chalk beneath the city for centuries, was remarkable. New Zealand tunnellers — hence the name Wellington — expanded the existing network of medieval chalk quarries into a 20-kilometre underground city complete with electric lighting, running water, a hospital with 700 beds, and living quarters for 24,000 men. On the morning of 9 April 1917, the soldiers emerged directly into the German front line. The quarry tour, led through 350 metres of preserved tunnels, uses period recordings, projections, and lighting effects to recreate the experience of the men who waited underground for the signal to attack. It is an extraordinarily powerful and well-executed museum experience — one of the best in France.
The Braderie de Lille is Europe's largest flea market, a 48-hour city-wide treasure hunt that attracts over two million visitors on the first weekend of September. The tradition dates to the 12th century, when the city's servants were given permission to sell their masters' cast-off goods. Today, over 10,000 vendors — from professional antique dealers to families clearing their attics — spread across 100 kilometres of pavement, turning every street into a market. The atmosphere is carnivalesque: the smell of moules-frites fills the air (restaurants compete to produce the tallest pile of empty mussel shells), beer flows from temporary bars, and the deals range from €1 paperbacks to €10,000 Art Deco sideboards. The Braderie begins at 14:00 on Saturday and runs continuously through Sunday — the best deals are found at dawn on Sunday morning, when tired vendors are most willing to negotiate. Book accommodation months in advance, and book through IMPT to earn 5% cashback on what will be the highest hotel rates of the year.
The Forêt de Compiègne — 14,000 hectares of ancient oak and beech woodland — was the hunting preserve of French kings from Francis I to Napoleon III. Over 1,000 kilometres of marked trails and forestry rides (straight avenues cut through the trees) make it a walker's and cyclist's paradise. Within the forest lies the Clairière de l'Armistice (Armistice Clearing), where Marshal Foch and the German delegation signed the armistice ending the First World War on 11 November 1918, in Foch's private railway carriage. In a calculated act of revenge, Hitler forced the French to sign their own surrender in the same railway carriage at the same location on 22 June 1940 — the carriage was then taken to Berlin and later destroyed. A replica carriage and a small but excellent museum tell the full story. Nearby, the fairytale Château de Pierrefonds — a medieval fortress "restored" (in truth, largely reinvented) by the architect Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, with soaring towers and a double-circuit of defensive walls — looks like it was drawn by Disney, and indeed served as a filming location for the BBC series Merlin.
No visit to Hauts-de-France is complete without tracing at least a portion of the Route de la Bière — a loosely signposted itinerary linking over 40 breweries across Nord and Pas-de-Calais. The full route covers approximately 250 kilometres through the flat but beautiful countryside of French Flanders, connecting traditional farmhouse breweries, industrial-scale operations, and modern craft start-ups. Key stops include Brasserie Duyck in Jenlain (producers of the definitive Jenlain Ambrée bière de garde since 1922), Brasserie Thiriez in Esquelbecq (Daniel Thiriez's cult farmhouse ales), Brasserie Castelain in Bénifontaine (the Ch'ti range and experimental small batches), and Brasserie de Saint-Sylvestre near Cassel (the magnificent 8.5% ABV 3 Monts). The route is best done over two to three days, with overnight stops at country estaminets serving the food that beer was designed to accompany — carbonnade, potjevleesch, and Maroilles cheese. The region's beers are not widely exported, so this is a genuinely unique tasting experience. Designate a driver, or better yet, cycle sections of the route using the Vélo Hauts-de-France network.
Getting around without a car: The TER regional train network connects all the major hubs — Lille, Arras, Amiens, Calais, Dunkerque — with frequent, affordable services. For the Opal Coast, bus services run from Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer to Wissant and the capes. The Baie de Somme steam railway is as much practical transport as it is a tourist attraction. If you are serious about sustainability, arriving by Eurostar and travelling by TER throughout is entirely feasible and deeply rewarding.
Suggested 5-day itinerary: Day 1 — Lille (Vieux-Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts, estaminet dinner). Day 2 — Arras + Vimy Ridge + Louvre-Lens. Day 3 — Amiens (cathedral, Hortillonnages, Somme battlefields at Thiepval and Beaumont-Hamel). Day 4 — Opal Coast (Cap Blanc-Nez to Cap Gris-Nez walk, Le Touquet or Wimereux). Day 5 — Chantilly or Compiègne (château, forest, Armistice Clearing).
Book sustainably: Every hotel stay booked through IMPT costs the same as Booking.com, but you earn 5% cashback in IMPT tokens and fund the removal of one tonne of CO₂ per booking — plus a 5 € de crédit gratuit when you sign up.
