Ypres and Flanders Fields

The Ypres Salient Of The First World War: The Menin Gate, Where The Last Post Has Sounded Each Evening Since 1928, Tyne Cot, The Largest Commonwealth War Cemetery, And Sites Inscribed By UNESCO In 2023 · Ypres, West Flanders Province

Ypres (Ieper in Dutch, the local language) is a small cloth town in West Flanders that became the centre of one of the most fought-over stretches of the Western Front in the First World War. For four years the Ypres Salient, a bulge in the Allied line around the town, saw the first large-scale use of poison gas in 1915 and the mud of Passchendaele in 1917, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers of many nations died here. The town was shelled flat and rebuilt after the war, its Cloth Hall carefully reconstructed. Today people come to remember: the Menin Gate, where the Last Post is sounded every evening, the In Flanders Fields Museum, and the cemeteries, bunkers and craters of the Salient, including Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world. In 2023 UNESCO inscribed many First World War funerary and memorial sites here and in France. The honest caveat: this is a landscape of graves, the sites are spread across farmland, and without a car, bike or guided tour you will see only the town.

The Menin Gate and the Cloth Hall (In Flanders Fields Museum) in Ypres, with Tyne Cot, Passchendaele and Essex Farm in the surrounding Ypres Salient, Ypres, West Flanders Province, Belgium

The Last Post is sounded at the Menin Gate every evening at 8 pm, a tradition since 1928 interrupted only by the German occupation - it is free, needs no ticket and is always crowded, so arrive 30-60 minutes early (confirm). The In Flanders Fields Museum in the Cloth Hall usually opens daily in the main season and closes on Mondays in winter, with a closure period in early January - check the current schedule. The Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 in Zonnebeke keeps similar seasonal hours and may close over midwinter. Commonwealth war cemeteries such as Tyne Cot and Essex Farm are open at all reasonable hours and free; the Tyne Cot visitor centre keeps daytime hours. Getting there: SNCB/NMBS trains from Brussels take roughly 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours, usually via Kortrijk, and from Ghent roughly 1 hour; the station is about 10 minutes' walk from the Menin Gate. The Salient itself needs a car, bike or guided tour. Book hotels months ahead for 11 November and Anzac Day (25 April).

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