Tournai

Tournai stands on the Scheldt where the Roman road from Cologne to Boulogne crossed the river, and it claims to have been the first capital of the Frankish kings: the tomb of Childeric I was found here in 1653 and Clovis was born in the town. Its Romanesque cathedral of Notre-Dame, begun in 1030 and famed for its five towers, rose beside the oldest belfry in Belgium. A woollen cloth industry based on English wool made the city rich, and in 1187 its commune won freedom from the local counts and placed Tournai directly under the French Crown. The stone Bridge of the Holes over the Scheldt dates from 1290.

Being a French enclave on the edge of Flanders, Tournai was a prize in the Hundred Years' War. In 1340 Edward III of England besieged it for a month with a great army, failed, and went bankrupt, which forced him to sign the Truce of Espléchin. In the fifteenth century the city's tapestry trade boomed, and its painters included Robert Campin and Rogier van der Weyden. Henry VIII took the city in 1513, making it the only Belgian city ever ruled by England, but handed it back to France in 1519.

Charles V added Tournai to the Low Countries in 1521, and religious strife and economic decline followed. The city turned strongly Calvinist, until the Duke of Parma conquered it in 1581 after a long siege and gave Protestants a year to sell their goods and leave. Louis XIV took Tournai in 1667, and the Treaty of Utrecht gave it to Austria in 1713.