La Piscine Museum in Roubaix

Roubaix built itself on textiles, and in the 1930s it built its workers a swimming pool in art deco style, a long basin under a barrel roof with a sunburst window at each end. The pool closed in the 1980s and reopened as a museum in 2001 with the water left in. Sculpture now lines the basin, the changing cabins hold ceramics, and the galleries behind them carry nineteenth and twentieth-century painting alongside a textile collection drawn from the mills that paid for the building in the first place. The result is a museum where the room competes with the collection and usually wins.

What you actually see

• The basin - water still in it, sculpture down both sides, the sound kept running.
• The sunburst windows - stained glass at each end of the pool hall.
• The changing cabins - ceramics displayed inside the original cubicles.
• The textile rooms - fabric samples and designs from the Roubaix mills.

When to go

Open through the year and best on a weekday; Sunday afternoons bring families and the pool hall gets loud. Closed Mondays. Winter suits it, since nothing here depends on weather and the building is warm. Temporary exhibitions drive the crowds, so check what is running before choosing a day.

Honest expectations

Roubaix around the museum is a plain post-industrial town and the walk from the metro is dull. The building carries the visit more than the permanent collection, which is solid rather than exceptional. The main hall echoes badly when busy. Queues form for well-publicised temporary shows and the cafe is full at lunchtime.

Nearby

Lille's old town and its fine arts museum, the arcaded squares of Arras and the textile towns along the Belgian border.