Tournai
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importance and possesses major industries. Several attractive but mostly reconstructed buildings testify to the prosperity of the old princely residence and episcopal town. Most of the works of the celebrated medieval school of painting were however destroyed by the iconoclasts in 1566. Cement works, engineering, food processing and a traditional textile industry, especially carpet weaving, form the basis of the town's economy.

Tournai has always been the most important market for the surrounding agricultural area.

Tournai is after Tongeren the oldest town in the country. Its origin was a settlement, Christianized by St Piat in the third C., on the Roman road between Cologne and Boulogne and by the fourth C. it was already a considerable fortress. In the mid-15th C. Frankish Salians arrived and made Tournai the capital of their kingdom. In 482 King Childerich, whose son Chlodwig was born here in 465, died in Tournai. Chlodwig moved the royal residence to Soissons, but elevated Tournai under St Eleutherius to the status of a bishopric which soon fell to the county of Flanders and which from 1188 was French. When the cathedral and several churches were built in the 12th and 13th C. the prosperity of the town began to increase and it became the center of stonemasonry, drawing its material from nearby quarries. In the Hundred Years' War Tournai remained the only large town in Flanders on the side of France and withstood the siege in 1340 by the English king Edward III. In the 15th C., thanks to its celebrated carpet making, the town experienced a flowering and its school of painting (Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden) achieved international fame. In 1521 Charles V was the new ruler and he ceded Tournai to the Spanish Netherlands, the varied fate of which it shared from then on. Conquered by Louis XIV in 1667 and subsequently fortified by Vauban, Tournai fell to the Austrian Netherlands in 1714. In 1750 a new period of considerable artistic achievement began with the manufacture of porcelain, but this ceased in 1891 with the closing of the factory.

In 1794 Tournai belonged once more to France and in 1814 it became part of the United Netherlands until 1830 when it was finally Belgian. The First World War left the town virtually intact but on May 16, 1940 a violent bombing attack destroyed the greater part of the historic buildings but not the cathedral; however, much was capable of restoration.

Some of the notable attractions in Tournai include the Romanesque and Gothic-style cathedral of Notre Dame de Tournai and its belfry, which have been designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Other places of interest are the 13th-century Scheldt bridge and the main square (Grand'Place), as well as a variety of museums.