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Museums · Meuse
Ossuaire de Douaumont
The Douaumont Ossuary is a monument to the memory of the soldiers of the 1916 battle of Verdun.
View full page →Memorial sites of the First World War
Verdun, the Somme, the Chemin des Dames: from 1914 to 1918, northern and eastern France were the stage for the greatest battles of the First World War. Forts, trenches, underground quarries and ossuaries keep alive the memory of the millions of soldiers who fought there.
This selection brings together the major memorial sites and the museums that explain the conflict, from the Historial in Péronne to the Museum of the Great War in Meaux. A moving visit, best made calmly and with a little preparation.
12selected sites
3regions
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Museums · Meuse
Mémorial De La Bataille De Verdun
The Verdun Memorial is one of the largest museums of the First World War.
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Museums · Meuse
Fort de Vaux
A visit to the fort reveals the daily living conditions of the soldiers besieged in the heart of the fortress, actors in a heroic drama that became a symbol of the resistance of the soldiers of Verdun.
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Museums · Meuse
Citadelle souterraine de Verdun
The Verdun citadel, built around 1624 and not, contrary to what is generally thought, remodelled by Vauban, but by one of his disciples, 50 years later, is a seven-bastion citadel.
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Monuments · Meuse
La butte de Montsec
Set on an outlier hill of the Côtes de Meuse that can be seen from afar, this monument is formed of a circular colonnade at the centre of which a copper orientation table reproduces in relief the position of the villages and locates the fighting of the Saint-Mihiel Salient.
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Monuments · Aisne
Chemin des Dames
This ridge road between Laon, Soissons and Reims was the scene of some of the deadliest fighting of the First World War, now marked by memorials and military cemeteries.
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Museums · Aisne
La Caverne du Dragon
As you enter the Caverne du Dragon, you may hear the chisels of the stonemasons who built the cathedrals, the hooves of the horses drawing the carriage of Louis XV's daughters along the Chemin des Dames, or the cries of soldiers caught under fire, taking refuge in this underground fortress.
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Museums · Marne
Musée du Fort de la Pompelle
A high place of the 1914–1918 war, listed as a historic monument, Fort de la Pompelle houses a museum showing collections of uniforms, helmets, weapons, utensils of the soldier's daily life, objects made by soldiers in their leisure time, and artillery pieces.
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Museums · Somme
Musée Somme 1916
Enter a 13th-century underground passage that recreates the life of soldiers in the trenches during the offensive of 1 July 1916.
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Museums · Somme
Historial de la Grande Guerre à Péronne
Created on the initiative of the Somme département council, the Historial de la Grande Guerre is at once a museum of the history of the First World War (a Musée de France), an international research centre and a documentation centre, housed since 1992 in Péronne in a modern building next to the medieval castle.
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Museums · Pas-de-Calais
Carrière Wellington
The Wellington Quarry is a First World War remembrance site in Arras, in the Pas-de-Calais.
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Museums · Seine-et-Marne
Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux
Creating such a museum in the conurbation lets the CAPM preserve and enhance a unique heritage, a testimony to the Great War.
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