We found a city with friendly inhabitants, still in structural transformation, looking and going its way, to a future that will be different from the one marked by coal mining and respiratory diseases. Among the highlights we found in Lens is the train station, whose main building ... with a little imagination ... reminiscent of an old steam locomotive, new apartment buildings along the incoming roads that keep alive the style of the old miners' settlements and, of course, the great lighthouse, the Dependence of the Louvre in Lens. Here, many visitors encounter world-class exhibits.

Downtown Lens is a great place to stroll or stop at one of the fine restaurants, whose exteriors are often unassuming - but really get going once you're seated and let your taste buds take you away.

But here, on the outskirts of the city, there are other surprises: just as the LouvreLens was built on the site of an old mine, throughout the area, as here, there are the old spoil heaps, the stored rock from the time when the mines were still working and the coal was mined.

In the buildings of the old collieries, new, young companies found their place next to the old winding towers. Thus, old and new come together, or rather remain together, and as a visitor one walks past this ensemble to make one's way to the overburden mountains on the other side of the highway, which requires stamina and the ascent is by no means as trivial as it first appears.