Happy learners are good learners! A blog for and by LFM pupils in Moscow.

The Old Stock Exchange of Lille is the most prestigious monument of the town. We gave her this name because it’s a place where the economic activity was intense. This square building is in reality a grouping of twenty-four identic houses with in the middle a big court. By now, it’s just a place where tourists, teens, booksellers and others like to go. It has been built in 1652-1653, when the town of Lille sold the 24 houses to some traders who transformed it into a stock exchange. The emblem of the Old Exchange is Mercury, the trade god, who is represented on statue situated at the top of the monument. They build in 1853 a statue of Napoléon 1^st and organized a reception to Napoléon 3^rd who came to see it. In his speech to his emperor, Frédéric Kuhlmann, the president of the trade room of Lille, talk about the development of the national industry; mostly about the spinning industry and the nautical and railway industry. The Napoléon’s statue is now located in a museum of Lille, the “Palais des Beaux-Arts”. At the entrance of the Old Exchange, to remind us where the statue was at first place, there’s a plate with the following inscription: “The 24^th September 1854, her Majesty Napoléon 3^rd came to visit the stock exchange of Lille and approved the decisions of the trade room for the construction of a statue in honor of Napoléon 1^st…”.

Each year, students from the IAE are organizing a jazz festival called the Old Stock Exchange Spring. It has been renovated 1989, a renovation who brought her back all her magnificence. We must know that this place owned her title of monument in 1921.