Tourcoing


Tourcoing is a city in northern France on the Belgian border. It is designated municipally as a commune within the department of Nord. Located to the north-northeast of Lille, adjacent to Roubaix, Tourcoing is the chef-lieu of two cantons and the fourth largest city in the French region of Hauts-de-France ranked by population with about 94,000 inhabitants.
Together with the cities of Lille, Roubaix, Villeneuve-d'Ascq and eighty-six other communes, Tourcoing is part of four-city-centred metropolitan area inhabited by more than 1.1 million people: the Métropole Européenne de Lille. To a greater extent, Tourcoing belongs to a vast conurbation formed with the Belgian cities of Mouscron, Kortrijk and Tournai, which gave birth to the first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation in January 2008, Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai with an aggregate of just over 2 million inhabitants.

Main sights

The city was the site of a significant victory for France during the French Revolutionary Wars. Marshal Charles Pichegru and his generals Joseph Souham and Jean Moreau defeated a combined force of British and Austrian troops in the Battle of Tourcoing on 29 Floréal II.

Transport

The Gare de Tourcoing is a railway station offering direct connections to Lille and Paris, Kortrijk, Ostend, Ghent and Antwerp. The town was formerly served by the Somain-Halluin Railway.

Notable people

Guilbert de Lannoy and his son Jean de Lannoy were Protestants from Tourcoing who resettled in Leiden, Holland. Jean's son, Philip Delano, was an early emigrant to the Plymouth Colony and progenitor of the prominent Delano family, which counts among its descendants prominent figures in American history, including president Franklin Roosevelt.

International relations

Twin towns - sister cities

Tourcoing is twinned with: