Dark Tourism

The thousand inhabitants of the French village of Ornes, on the edge of a forest in the early 20th century, were awoken from their idyllic lives at the outbreak of the First World War.

The bayonet trench in Douamont, France, is a war memorial on the Verdun battlefield that rests on a war myth.

Although today, Vloethemveld is a 350-hectare nature reserve a stone's throw from Bruges, it was once home to a Belgian army ammunition depot and the nature area also hides other military secrets.

On the night of 18-19 January 1923, the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia) caught the first test signals from the Dutch broadcasting station Kootwijk, over 12,000 kilometres away. It was a miracle of technology—or was it?

In the 1950s, anyone who wanted to cross the Upper Merwede had to rely on a ferry service. This was not very convenient in emergencies.

During the final months of World War I, the British Army Troop Company Royal Engineers erected a concrete bridge over the Kemmelbeek near Ypres.

A skull and crossbones adorn the mossy grave of Antoine Michel Wemaer, a merchant buried here in 1837.

New Year's Eve 1874. Over a railway viaduct hundreds of metres long near Wesel, Germany, a first train thunders over what will become the transnational railway line between Paris and Hamburg.

Two and a half centuries ago, on 13 February 1787, the first burial took place in Bruges' Central Cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

In 1939, construction of a 50-kilometre defence line between Koningshooikt and Wavre, known as the KW-Line, began on behalf of the Belgian army.