The Quartier Exentric — the name is its own — is a residential district south of the town centre that contains a remarkable collection of Art Deco villas and apartment buildings from the 1920s and 1930s. Where much of Dunkerque was rebuilt in a pragmatic postwar style after the destruction of 1940–1945, this neighbourhood survived with its interwar architecture largely intact, giving it a character entirely different from the rest of the town.
The buildings range from restrained streamline moderne to genuinely eccentric confections of ceramic tile, ironwork, and idiosyncratic ornament. The area is not yet polished for tourism, which is part of its appeal — these are people's homes, and the neighbourhood has the lived-in quality of somewhere that doesn't know it's interesting. A walk through on a Sunday morning, when traffic is light, is the best way to see it.