After Lille Bombaysers, Europe XXL, Fantastic and Renaissance, step into Eldorado in 2019, featuring Mexico as guest of honour, with its contemporary artists and the richness of its popular cultures.

For this fifth thematic edition, lille3000 has opted for a Spring-Summer-Autumn programme making use of outdoor spaces that gives visitors the opportunity to explore the region during the sunny season.

Eldorado will extend significantly throughout the Lille Eurodistrict (89 municipalities are participating) and into the Hauts-de-France Region.

Eldorado seeks to be a movement that highlights the qualities upon which the wealth of our region is built: its inhabitants and their ability to invent new models for living together better, its companies, who are innovating to create a new economy, and the close network of ties between artists, researchers and citizens.

Eldorado acts an ongoing project to encourage individual and collective initiatives and share them, a place to experiment with living spaces and human contact.

Eldorado, a quest for an ideal within everyone’s reach.

Featuring an opening parade, urban metamorphoses, major exhibitions at the Tripostal, the Palais des Beaux-Arts, the Gare Saint Sauveur and many partner cultural venues, shows, gardens, street art, design, debates, gastronomy and new events.

THE MYTH OF ELDORADO

Originally, Eldorado (from the Spanish el dorado: “the golden one”) referred to a chief of the Muisca tribe and was associated with a fabled region of South America that was believed to be very rich in gold and precious stones.

This myth appeared in the region of Bogota in 1536. It was quickly spread by the Spanish conquistadors, who believed it on the basis of the tale of Francisco de Orellana’s explorations and in relation to the older myth of the cities of gold, which was also widely circulated at the time.

For nearly four centuries, this mirage of a legendary land has fuelled treasure hunts and frantic expeditions.