Ypres is a Belgian municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. Though Ieper is the Dutch and only official name, the city’s French name, Ypres, is most commonly used in English due to its role in World War I when only French was in official use in Belgian documents, including on maps. The municipality comprises the city of Ypres and the villages of Boezinge, Brielen, Dikkebus, Elverdinge, Hollebeke, Sint-Jan, Vlamertinge, Voormezele, Zillebeke, and Zuidschote. Together, they are home to some 35,000 inhabitants.
During World War I, Ypres was the centre of intense and sustained battles between German and Allied forces. During the war, because the British troops had trouble pronouncing its name, they nicknamed the city “Wipers”. The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres commemorates those soldiers of the British Commonwealth – with the exception of Newfoundland and New Zealand – who fell in the Ypres Salient during the First World War before 16 August 1917, who have no known grave. Those who died from that date – and all from New Zealand and Newfoundland – are commemorated elsewhere. The memorial now bears the names of more than 54,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. The memorial, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield with sculpture by Sir William Reid-Dick, was unveiled by Lord Plumer on 24 July 1927.
After the war the town was rebuilt using money paid by Germany in reparations, with the main square, including the Cloth Hall and town hall, being rebuilt as close to the original designs as possible (the rest of the rebuilt town is more modern in appearance). The Cloth Hall today is home to In Flanders Fields Museum, dedicated to Ypres’s role in the First World War. The belfry that surmounts the hall houses a 49-bell carillon. The whole complex was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999.
Today, Ypres is a small city in the very western part of Belgium, the so-called Westhoek. Ypres these days has the title of “city of peace” and maintains a close friendship with another town on which war had a profound impact: Hiroshima. Both towns witnessed warfare at its worst: Ypres was one of the first places where chemical warfare was employed, while Hiroshima suffered the debut of nuclear warfare. The city governments of Ypres and Hiroshima advocate that cities should never be targets again and campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Ypres is part of the campaign Mayors for Peace, an international Mayoral organization mobilizing cities and citizens worldwide to abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020.
[responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) is a project to build a ground-based integrated European air defense system which includes anti-ballistic missile capability. As of July 2023, nineteen European states participate...
