Lille, Flanders & the Somme
The Museum of Flanders has a worthwhile, well-presented collection of Flemish art, both old and modern, including canvases in the 15th-century Flemish primitive style and two dramatic paintings of the Battle of Cassel (1677). Multimedia guides are free.
There's a play area for kids.
27.86 MILES
Inaugurated in 1892, Lille's illustrious Fine Arts Museum claims France's second-largest collection after Paris' Musée du Louvre. Its cache of sublime…
17.83 MILES
No museum gives a more balanced yet moving and user-friendly introduction to WWI history. It’s a multisensory experience combining soundscapes, videos,…
11.08 MILES
This is an unusually light-hearted WWI attraction. Reverend Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton set up the Everyman’s Club here in 1915 to offer rest and recreation…
23.33 MILES
Probably the most-visited Salient site, this is the world’s biggest British Commonwealth war cemetery, with 11,956 graves. A huge semicircular wall…
Langemark Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof
20.61 MILES
The Salient's largest German WWI cemetery is smaller than Tyne Cot but arguably more memorable, amid oak trees and trios of squat, mossy crosses. Some 44…
29.48 MILES
It's hard not to be overwhelmed by the waste and folly of the Western Front as you walk past panel after panel engraved with 579,606 tiny names: WWI dead…
22.51 MILES
The unusual 1950 IJzertoren is built of drab purple-brown brick and topped with power-station-style windows. This colossal 84m-high ‘peace’ tower is at…
18.09 MILES
Every night at 8pm, traffic through the Menin Gate is halted while buglers sound the Last Post in remembrance of the WWI dead, a moving tradition started…
0.17 MILES
Wheat flour has long been milled and linseed oil pressed in windmills like this one, set on the highest point in town to catch the wind. In the 19th…
7.28 MILES
Founded in 1946, this brewery in Watou can be visited on guided tours (phone or email ahead, minimum 15 people). Sample its wares in the brasserie. You…
11.02 MILES
Once the municipal centre for weighing and storing hops, the 19th-century Stadsschaal now houses this distinctively scented museum, where you’ll learn…
11.08 MILES
This is an unusually light-hearted WWI attraction. Reverend Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton set up the Everyman’s Club here in 1915 to offer rest and recreation…
11.25 MILES
Though English troops nicknamed it 'Good old Pops', Poperinge had a more sinister side – it was a place of execution for wartime deserters. Hidden behind…
11.39 MILES
The imposing Sint-Janskerk’s ‘miraculous’ little Virgin-and-Child statuette reputedly brought a stillborn child to life in 1479.
12.28 MILES
The mythical Westvleteren Trappist beer comes from this isolated abbey in Westvleteren village, 7km north of Poperinge; it's reached via a web of tiny…
16.47 MILES
Honouring over 4500 British and Commonwealth soldiers ‘with no known grave’, this memorial is next to the British War Graves Section of Dunkirk's town…