War and industrial relics in West Flanders

During the excavation work for the railway construction between Ypres and Kortrijk in 1854, a sixty-metre-high hill was created.

German soldier Peter Kollwitz was not yet 18 years old when he was killed on 23 October 1914 while attempting to cross the Yser near Diksmuide.

Langemark in Belgium has the dubious honor of being the place where chemical warfare made its debut: on April 22, 1915, German soldiers opened gas bottles from which 180 tons of chlorine gas hissed away. At least a thousand soldiers died in a blind panic.

Tyne Cot Cemetery is the largest British military cemetery in continental Europe. More than 10,000 soldiers who died at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 during the First World War were buried in the monumental cemetery in Passchendaele.

Half hidden underground on a hillside along the First World War battlefield in West Flanders, the German army built a reinforced concrete command post bunker.

For years, Izegem has been the Belgian shoe and brush city par excellence. Today, the art-deco building of shoe manufacturer Eperon d'Or hides an impressive industrial heritage site.

The Trench of Death on the Yser Front in Dixmuide is the only preserved Belgian trench complex from the First World War.

In 1954, the Belgian army built a bunker at the foot of the Kemmelberg. The top secret command center would house the army headquarters in the event of a crisis or conflict during the Cold War.

The "Céramique et briquetteries méchaniques du Littoral" brickworks flanks the Kortrijk-Bossuit canal since 1924.

Transfo Zwevegem, Zwevegem's old power station, has been generating steam and electricity in the region since 1911. The power station is now repurposed.