The destination of the annual Paris – Roubaix road bike race - it leads across the hard cobblestones of northern France to almost the border with Belgium - is not just sporty but also cultural.
The heyday of the textile industry in French Flanders can still be seen there today in many splendid private and public buildings.
The economic and social decline in the area of what is now the Métropole Européenne de Lille municipal association in the 1970s was brutal, the challenge immense and the structural change profound.
In order to cope with this, the notorious cultural undersupply was also addressed. Today, the region's museum landscape is remarkably dense by French standards. Only a few kilometers separate the museums in Lille, Roubaix, Tourcoing and Villeneuve d'Ascq; a little further away are those of Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Douai, Lens or Valenciennes.
When the municipal bathing establishment of Roubaix, built in Art Deco style from 1927 to 1932, was getting on in years in 1985, the city fathers and mothers voted for a new building elsewhere. However, the dilapidated building was carefully renovated and converted into what is now the Musée d'art et d'industrie André Diligent - La Piscine. Here individual rooms with bathtubs for men or women, but above all the vaulted swimming pool with its tiled cabins, showers, galleries, balconies and monumental lunettes made of colored glass, bear witness to the old function. For a few seconds a sound installation evokes frolicking, screeching children in the water a few times an hour. The basin itself has been reduced in the middle to a canal, which is fed at the head end by a water-spouting Poseidon head with an audible splashing jet;The lateral surfaces of the basin obtained in this way became a course for sculptures and sculptures through built-in installations.
La Piscine is known for its extensive collection of works of sculpture from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including sculptures by Antoine Bourdelle, Camille Claudel and François Pompon. This includes the - very successful - reconstruction of the Parisian studio of the sculptor Henri Bouchard. Aesthetic presentation goes hand in hand with didactics - explanations of techniques and production conditions. A highlight of the inventory are historical sample books of the textile industry, which can be viewed by appointment in the "Tissuthèque".
However, visitors can also expect a very rich inventory of paintings, applied arts, ceramics and fashion.
Regionally, nationally or internationally known artists are represented.
There are numerous discoveries that can be made for which you have to bring some time with you.
In between you can fortify yourself in the museum restaurant, whose cuisine is as good as the snow-white wall and ceiling design of the Art Deco original;
In summer, a terrace and two gardens also invite you to take a break from art.