La Piscine

When socialist mayor Jean-Baptiste Lebas commissioned the most beautiful swimming pool in France in 1927, textile-rich Roubaix was thriving. The Art Deco masterpiece featured an Olympic pool beneath stained glass suns, plus mosaic-tiled private bathtubs, unprecedented luxury for working-class bathers. After the textile industry collapsed and the pool closed in 1985, locals rallied to save it from demolition. The architect who’d transformed Paris’s Gare d’Orsay was hired to work similar magic, and in 2001 sculptures replaced swimmers around a pool that still holds water.

It took five years to build the pool and sixteen more before the museum reopened its doors, which means Roubaix has now spent longer looking at the thing than it ever spent swimming in it. The water stayed. The people doing laps did not.