Dark Tourism

The Abbey of Aulne was founded around 637 on the wooded banks of the Sambre. Golden years and disaster succeeded for centuries, but the French Revolution dealt the abbey the final blow.

The French village of Remenauville had 138 inhabitants living and working in the shadow of its neo-Gothic church tower in the early 20th century. But World War I changed everything.

One of the 138 Dutch air watchtowers was built in the 1950s right between the rivers Maas and Waal.

The Atlantic Wall, Nazi Germany's World War II defence line, stretched over 4,000 kilometres from the North Cape to the most south-westerly tip of France, namely Hendaye.

The German army fenced off the border between Belgium and the Netherlands from 1915 with a three-wire fence. Electric current of 2,000 volts was rushed through the middle wire.

In 1815, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Dutch King William I gave the go-ahead for constructing the New Dutch Waterline. This defence line extended over a distance of 85 kilometres between the Zuiderzee and the Biesbosch.

On the night of 10 May 1918, the British army attempted to block the Ostend harbour channel so that German submarines could no longer sail out.

The Hartmannswillerkopf massif in the French Vosges Mountains overlooks the Alsace and was the scene of heavy fighting between the French and German armies from December 1914 onwards during the First World War.

Monday morning, February 21, 1916. It is a quarter past seven in the morning when the German army opens fire on the forts north and east of Verdun in France.

A monumental memorial was erected in 1938 on the bank of the Yser in Nieuwpoort in honour of Belgian King Albert I.