Things to discover in France

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.

This truncated metal headframe took miners from the French Meurchin coal mine four hundred metres underground to cut coal.

The rock castle of Lutzelhardt was partly carved out of the sandy rocks of the 400-metre-high Adelsberg at some point in the 13th century.

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.

Fosse Mathilde is one of the oldest preserved mining buildings in the northern French mining basin. The brick complex was built in 1831. The Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin mined coal there until 1862.

The Schengen Agreement has allowed free movement of people within the European Union since 1992. As internal borders disappeared, customs posts along the border became utterly useless.

The French mining company Compagnie des mines de Vicoigne-Noeux-Drocourt pulled out all the stops in 1886 when it modernised its mining headquarters in Noeux-les-Mines. 

In the 20th century, the French commune of Bachy had more than 40 customs officers keeping an eye on the train station and along the approach roads from Belgium.

You bump into this brick obelisk at the edge of a forest in northern France. The monument was erected more than two centuries ago.

The thousand inhabitants of the French village of Orne, 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.