La Piscine Museum (Musée d'Art et d’Industrie André Diligent)

The basics

The museum showcases pieces from the former Industrial Museum of Roubaix, founded in 1835. In addition to its permanent textile exhibit, the collection includes ceramics by Picasso and Chagall, sculptures from Rodin, Giacometti, and Lipchitz, drawings, prints, paintings from celebrated local artists, and an exhibit devoted to the history of Roubaix. There’s also a rotating roster of temporary shows from modern and contemporary artists. The museum has a restaurant featuring an outdoor terrace overlooking a garden.

The museum regularly offers guided group tours of the collections—themes range from masonic symbols in the building’s architecture to an overview of the female artists featured. Contact the museum for scheduling and reservations. If you plan on visiting the Manufacture des Flandres or the Villa Cavrois, special combination tickets are available and can be purchased directly from the museum by cash or credit card.

Things to know before you go

• The on-site restaurant is open for lunch and drinks from Sunday to Tuesday, until early evening. For large groups, advance reservations are recommended.

• The museum offers optional audio guides of the permanent collection at a reasonable cost with commentary for a 2-hour visit in French, English, and Dutch.

• For families with children, tablets are loaned free of charge from the multimedia desk. You’ll find two kid-friendly routes complete with trails of clues and interactive games. There are only 30 tablets, so supplies can run out.

• Looking for souvenirs? The museum converted the pool’s former water filtering room into a boutique and bookshop. There are art books, postcards, magnets, toys, textiles, and plenty of other gift items for sale.

• Children and teens 18 and under and people with disabilities can enter free of charge.

• The museum is accessible to people with wheelchairs, and wheelchairs can be borrowed upon request. Equipment is also available for hearing-impaired visitors and service dogs and canes are welcomed in for the blind or visually-impaired.

How to get there

The Piscine Museum is easy to reach by public transport from downtown Lille in about 30 minutes. Simply take Line 2 on the metro to the Gare Jean Lebas stop, then walk half a kilometer (about a third of a mile). By bus, take Line 32 or 76. Or take the train to the Roubaix station. You can also come by private car (park at the train station) or even by bike.

When to get there

The museum is open Tuesday to Thursday from mid-morning to late afternoon and on weekends from during the afternoon. On Friday, the museum opens from 11am until 8pm, and starting at 6pm visits are free. The museum can also be visited free of charge during the first Sunday of every month. The gift shop opening hours are the same as the museum, except it closes for lunch on weekdays.

Lille’s industrial history: visiting the Villa Cavrois

The Cavrois-Mahieu was founded in 1865 and once produced luxury fabrics for Parisian homes. In 1929, the owner Paul Cavrois commissioned an avant-garde villa as his new family home on the outskirts of Roubaix, designed and built by the innovative French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens. The modernist chateau was used as soldiers’ barracks under German occupation during World War II, then finally became listed as a French national movement in 1990. The historic attraction is now open to tourists.