Car & Van Hire - Lille Europe Train Station

Arriving at Lille Europe by Eurostar or TGV often means you have onward plans that public transport alone doesn’t easily cover. Enterprise offers car hire and van hire at Lille Europe Train Station, giving you the flexibility to continue your journey at your own pace. 

Lille is a substantial northern French city with a strong Flemish character, sitting just a few kilometres from the Belgian border. Its centre mixes 17th-century baroque architecture with a lively student population, giving it an energy that feels more lived-in than tourist-facing. The Grand Place and the Vieux-Lille district are the beating heart of the city, where cobbled streets open onto outdoor terraces, food markets and independent shops. Beyond the centre, the city spreads into quieter residential areas and, further out, a broad, flat landscape of farmland and former industrial towns. 

Lille sits at a crossroads between France, Belgium and the Channel coast, which means a lot of the most rewarding things to see are simply not practical by public transport. Whether you are heading south towards Arras and the war memorial landscapes of the Somme, west to the coast at Dunkirk or Boulogne-sur-Mer, or crossing into Belgium towards Brussels, having a car removes the guesswork. An automatic car or SUV suits longer cross-border stretches well, particularly if you are travelling with family or carrying luggage from a longer trip. 

Van hire is well suited to the practicalities that can come with a trip through Lille. Groups arriving on the same train and heading to shared accommodation benefit from a people carrier or minivan rather than splitting across taxis. If you are travelling for work, moving equipment or supplies across the region, a small van or large van keeps things straightforward. The Nord department and surrounding areas have strong links to trade and logistics, and Lille's central position makes it a practical staging point for deliveries or site visits across the region. 

Nearby attractions

The Palais des Beaux-Arts is one of France's most significant art museums outside Paris, with a wide-ranging collection that includes works by Rubens, Monet and Goya. 

The Louvre-Lens, a satellite of the Paris institution, is worth the short trip south into the former mining town of Lens. The building itself is striking, low and reflective, and the permanent collection rotates pieces from the main Louvre collection. 

For a change of pace, the coastal town of Boulogne-sur-Mer to the west offers a walled upper town, a castle museum and the large Nausicaa ocean centre, which is a solid day out for families. 

Northern France is flat and fast by road, which makes it genuinely easy to cover significant distance in a short time. That openness also means the landscape has a character of its own, with WWI memorial sites, canal routes and market towns that reward a slower drive if you have the time to take one.