Aire/la Lys - Que tu es donc jolie, Aire, vieille cité...
A Town of history and leisures single
Bailliage of architecture in the area was built into 1600. Of Flemish Renaissance style, this old body of guard is today the seat of the office of Tourism. The Town hall, built 1717 to 1721, is enough vast to occupy all the side Is of Grand'Place. Majestic contiguous Beffroi shelters a chime of or shell the every fifteen minutes of the popular airs. The Collegial One: is Gothic building with 3 naves one of most significant of Flanders. At the interior, one can admire there a superb organ case in oak going back to 1633, coming from the old abbey of Clairmarais.
The Saint-Jacob Vault, high, style baroque, 33 cm was built by the Jesuit at the end of XVIIe century. With the borders of the hills of Artois and plain of Flandres, Surface-on-the-Lily, town of history and tradition, draw up like testimony of a rich person passed, his historic buildings, which cut out on a sky or the light of North, floods of a gleam blanchâtre banks of the Lily, and many other rivers which cross the city of Lydéric and Chrymilde. Surrounded by greenery, fields and thickets, the centre town keeps still today its moyenâgeuse structure in spite of dismantling of the ramparts. It grew rich by a more contemporary contribution of dwellings and trade.
Tradition obliges, the weekly market, the festivals votive and festives, as the festival of the Andouille (culinary speciality of the city), punctuate their accents and their rites the four seasons. The 10.000 inhabitants find in this city of Pas-de-Calais, qualities which make a city of it or the art of living is still synonymous with wellbeing, while opening on the future, through sport, local trade and cultural activity(AP)s exempted by the school of music, the Communal Office of the Culture or the Office of Tourism Tourist office.
Lydéric, Founder of the city. Many cultural and sporting equipment, allows the habitants et with the visitors, to occupy their leisures agreeably. Without forgetting the many rivers which cross the city for the amateurs of fishing or kayak.
With the borders of Flandres and Artois, Airois like to show their city placed on the green course of the Lily Located at 60km: of Lille, capital of North; from Arras, its prefecture; and of the Coast of Opal; close to the motorway A26, our City with the historical past allured by its discrete charm. **time-out** quote for the first time in a text history in 857, borough significant in the County of Flandres, the file of city keep preciously a text of 1188 "The Charter of Friendship " sign by Philippe of Alsace by which its inhabitant himself promise assistance mutual insurance company and himself name FRIEND - Surface make then part of Artois, return with House of Burgundy with XVe century, then by the play of heritage be Spanish during of long year. Begun again by Louis XIV at the time of the treaty of Utrecht (1713), it will become definitively French then.
At that time, the city knows a great prosperity: 5 barracks, of the ramparts built by Vauban, the construction of many houses of which some were preserved. Under the Revolution, with the great administrative transformations of the time, a serious chance is given to Aire to become chief town of department, but it is Arras which Robespierre supports finally. Time passes... the two world wars cause large damage in the centre town. In August 1944, a terrible bombardment throws the apse of Collegial low and damages many residences. Today, in the east of its old center which practically did not change centuries since, draws up a new more modern district.
The administration of the Historic buildings helps the Municipality to keep the architectural elegance inherited XVIIe and XVIIIe centuries which saw the construction of our more beautiful monuments.