Valenciennes

Industrial town in the Nord département, northeast France, near the Belgian border; population (1990) 39,300, conurbation 225,000. It became French in 1678. The town gives its name to a type of lace, the production of which, having gone into decline, has undergone a revival. It has important metallurgical and electronic industries, an oil refinery, hosiery and glass manufacture, and a range of light industries. There is a university here.

Features The town's museum is rich in Flemish and French 18th-century paintings. The library houses one of the first documents written in the French language. The town was the birthplace of the king of Jerusalem Baldwin I (1058), the chronicler and poet Jean Froissart (1337), the artist Jean Watteau (1684), and the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827).