The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Lille

Lille orders beer over wine and hosts Europe's largest flea market, and Mama Shelter fits right in. This colorful boutique hotel in the historic center has satin sheets and big flat-screens in every private room, yet the graffiti-covered walls and rooftop terrace packed with DJs give it the energy of a very well-funded youth hostel. Rooms run from compact to a skylit XXL suite dressed in animal prints and pop art.

An 18th-century townhouse on the quiet west edge of Lille's old town, with modernist furniture and contemporary art pushed up against the period plasterwork in a way that feels considered rather than chaotic. The kitchen leans into inventive, seafood-forward French cooking and draws on the hotel's own gardens. A small, boutique luxury hotel, and a Michelin Key holder, that treats its beautiful bones as a starting point.

A 15th-century hospice in old Flemish Lille, now a hotel where Louis XV oak panels and Philippe Starck Lucite chairs share the same bedroom without anyone calling security. Part of Marriott's Autograph Collection, it carries the calm of a former monastery into very modern comforts. Rooms mostly face the courtyard gardens, there's a spa with a hammam and pool, and the glass-roofed courtyard does coffee by day and piano bar by night.

A futuristic triangular glass tower in Lille's business district, Barrière is a luxury hotel that makes no apology for ignoring the Flemish brick charm of the old town nearby. Rooms are spacious and sleek, with floor-to-ceiling windows, jewel tones, and polka dot carpets that somehow work. A casino, spa, and heated breakfast terrace round things out, and the soundproofing holds even when the ground-floor venues are in full swing.