| Summary: | A polychromatic land of white and blue stone and pink, yellow and black brick, Flanders has sought colour combinations in building materials since the Middle Ages. Its French-speaking capital, Lille, was the city in the south of the Catholic Netherlands where plants imported by the Dutch East Indies Company acclimatized and where the ‘Joyous Entry’ celebrations of the counts, Dukes of Burgundy, archdukes and kings of Spain took place. During the golden age of Burgundy, this tradition of luxuriance was reflected in the increasing use of colours on buildings, a trend that would endure until the siege of Lille by Louis XIV in 1667. The ‘Spanish’ gates display brickwork enamelled in colour. The red brick and grey sandstone entrance façade of the Hospice Comtesse is set off by a yellow ochre colourwash. The Vieille Bourse (Old Stock Exchange) flaunts its colourful facades resembling a piece of cabinetmaking, with incrustations of pearly stones and brick gleaming like tortoiseshell. The French-Lillois taste for colour was passed down through the city-centre reconstruction in the seventeenth century, as shown in the scale model of 1743. Restorations undertaken in the last ten years or so have revealed this bright urban decorative tradition in a number of other main squares in northern French cities.
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