La Manufacture de Roubaix

Created on the site of the former textile factory Craye, La Manufacture is a museum dedicated to living memory and the manufacture of textiles.

Here we discover the history of textiles in Roubaix and the region through an exciting sensory experience. For one hour, we are shown how wool is first spun into yarn and then woven into fabric. Surrounded by historical and contemporary textile machines, we can follow the evolution of fabric production from the Middle Ages to the present day and hear about the stories of the people whose lives and work are part of this textile history.

The museum is located in part of the former premises of the company Craye et fils, a weaving mill specializing in the production of upholstery fabrics, founded in 1914 by Israel Jean-Baptiste Craye. In the 1960s, the company, which traditionally produced velvets, carpets and jacquard fabrics, specialized in the machine production of medieval Flemish tapestries. When business declined, the family business was acquired in 1992 by the Belgian group Metrax, whose CEO set up a jacquard museum in a vacant workshop in 2001, which he named Manufacture des Flandres. In 2009, the group moved its production to Belgium and ceased operations at its Roubaix site. The museum's collections were then donated to the city, which bought back the walls. The museum was renovated in 2014 and reopened in 2015 under the name La Manufacture, musée de la mémoire et de la création textile.