Located on the spot of an old, abandoned industrial site near the entrance to the city, and just a short way away from the city's historical squares, the Cité Nature in Arras is a scientific cultural center dedicated to nature, nutrition, and health. Eleven buildings in the center of the plot were destroyed for the creation of a triangular garden two and a half hectares wide. This central garden lies between the Scarpe River and two large, similarly shaped market halls, brought into relief by retention basins dug for the occasion.

Treated as an open field, with planted squares of land tracing the locations of old buildings, the central garden functions as a kind of miniaturization of the vast agricultural  landscape of the Artois region that surrounds the city. The area is partitioned into plots for cultivation, flowered prairies, orchards, and vineyards, providing a wealth of plant arrangements based both on themes of wild plants and of certain selected varieties of raised plants. The scientific personnel and other museum staff continually reinvent and enliven the center with pedagogical experiments and presentations.