Region: Nord-Pas-de-Calais
Population: 34,190
City ambassadors: Eric Sikora (former RC Lens player, 1985-2004), Louis Laforge (TV journalist and presenter)

Lens is an industrial city in the Pas-de-Calais in Northern France near the border with Belgium. Originally the region was famous for coal mining and the destructive evidence of the First World War giving a rather depressing outlook.

Surrounding the town, the landscape is freckled with the remains of its mining history and deeply dug wartime trenches which have left a unique landscape. However, it is undergoing a revival and is now a thriving community with a university and the recently opened Louvre-Lens art museum.

What to See

•  Louvre-Lens Museum

This branch of the prestigious Parisian museum was built on mining wasteland between the highest slag heaps in Europe and the Stade Bollaert-Delelis. The design (by Japanese architects SANAA) incorporates a transparent construction with fa?ades of aluminium and glass. The exhibition halls are strung together in an elongated layout.

•  Le Beffroi et Hotel de Ville d’Arras

23 belfries in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy regions are listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. One of the most famous, Le Beffroi et Hotel de Ville d’Arras (Town Hall), is not far from Lens and is famous for its 77m tower, built in Gothic style which overlooks the city of Arras.

Transport

Lens is well served by the A21 motorway that loops in a semi-circle around the north and east of the city and connects Lens to other motorways, in particular the A1 that runs from Paris to Lille and the A26 from Calais to Reims.

The city is served by the high-speed TGV-Nord rail link, with six trains a day to Paris (journey time 1 hour 10 minutes) as well as SNCF lines 6, 13, 21 and 23 to Valenciennes, Arras, Dunkirk and Lille. The nearest airport is Lille.

Distances to other UEFA EURO 2016 venues
Lille – 40km
Saint-Denis – 195km
Paris – 200km
Lyon – 675km
Saint-Etienne – 735km
Bordeaux – 790km
Toulouse – 880km
Marseille – 985km
Nice – 1150km

Football

Organised football came to Lens in 1905. The owner of the Chez Douterlinghe cafe founded a club after watching college students play at Place Verte in the town. The club elected their first board in early 1906 and chose to play in green and black, a nod to Place Verte and the city's connection to the coal industry.

All football activities ceased during the First World War. In 1919, with the encouragement of a certain Mr Laroche, the American director of a war relief company, the club came back to life, this time wearing the sky blue and white of the Franco-American Sports Union. In the following year Pierre Moglia became president. In reference to the Spanish occupation of Artois in the 16th and 17th centuries, he designed the side's red and yellow striped shirt.

The French Football Federation (FFF) adopted professional football in January 1931. After 18 months of uncertainty, RC Lens (RCL) was accepted into the second division. In 1936 the club's new stadium was named after Felix Bollaert, chairman of the board of the Lens Mining Company.

A low point came in 1988/89 when RC Lens finished bottom of the top flight. But better times were ahead and RCL had their finest hour in 1998 – French Ligue 1 champions. The next year they added the French League Cup. After a highly successful decade, punctuated by participation in European competitions, RCL suffered two painful relegations to Ligue 2, in 2007 and 2011. They were sold Lens to Hafiz Mammadov, a wealthy Azerbaijani businessman, in 2013.

UEFA capacity: 35,000
Tenants: RC Lens
Reopened: August 2015 (original opened in June 1933)

Stade Bollaert-Delelis, earlier known as Stade Felix-Bollaert, officially opened in 1934 after a two-year construction period.

The stadium got further enlarged in preparation of the 1984 European Championships. New stands and additional second tiers raised capacity from 39,000 to 51,000 places, making it for a short moment the largest stadium in France.

The stadium set its record attendance in 1992 when 48,912 spectators were witness of a league match between Lens and Marseille.

During the1998 World Cup, the stadium hosted five first round group matches and the round of 16 match between France and Paraguay (1-0).

In 2004, the addition of further corporate facilities reduced capacity to just over 40,000.  The stadium got renamed Stade Bollaert-Delelis in 2012 in honour of long-time major of the city Andre Delelis, who had died in the same year.

Stade Bollaert-Delelis will be one of the playing venues of the Euro 2016 tournament, hosting three first round group stage matches and one round of 16 match.

UEFA EURO 2016 matches

Group stage
11/06/16, 15.00: Albania v Switzerland (Group A)
16/06/16, 15.00: England v Wales (Group B)
21/06/16, 21.00: Czech Republic v Turkey (Group D)

Round of 16
25/06/16, 21.00: WD v 3B/E/F