Hauts-de-France

Tucked away in the northern French town of Croix stands a bold statement in brick, steel, and marble: Villa Cavrois. This striking modernist mansion, completed in 1932, was the brainchild of famed architect Robert Mallet-Stevens.

The northern French town of Valenciennes had more in store than steel and coal. The glass industry also had its heyday there.

At the end of the 19th century, the Cotonnière du Touquet settled in the northern French textile town of Tourcoing.

A century ago, in 1925, the Guenot & Duprez cotton mill appeared on the scene in the French textile town of Tourcoing.

The iron headframe was preserved on the site where the French Compagnie des Mines de Liévin laid its first coal mine in 1858.

In 1874, a cross-border railway connected the Belgian town of Péruwelz with the French municipality of Anzin. The aim was to export coal from the northern French mining basin to Belgium.

The French village of Remenauville had 138 inhabitants living and working in the shadow of its neo-Gothic church tower in the early 20th century. But World War I changed everything.

This truncated metal headframe took miners from the French Meurchin coal mine four hundred metres underground to cut coal.

Fosse Mathilde is one of the oldest preserved mining buildings in the northern French mining basin. The brick complex was built in 1831. The Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin mined coal there until 1862.

The Schengen Agreement has allowed free movement of people within the European Union since 1992. As internal borders disappeared, customs posts along the border became utterly useless.