Grand Est

Anyone following the winding footpath through this protected nature reserve unwittingly steps into a fascinating, but forgotten chapter of industrialisation.

The fortified town of Bitche is dominated by a citadel stretching out over a sandstone rock. 

L'ouvrage du Four-à-Chaux was one of the gros ouvrages or large artillery works of the French Maginot Line. Yet almost nothing of it can be seen above ground.

One of the most exceptional mining complexes in French Alsace, where potassium or potash was brought to the surface, is the Carreau Rodolphe.

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.

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.

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.

Of the six blast furnaces that the Uckange steel factory had in the early twentieth century, today, only the 71-meter-high blast furnace 4 remains.