Top 10 Monuments & Statues in Hauts-de-France, France

The Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated died between July and November 1916. The memorial also serves as an Anglo-French Battle Memorial in recognition of the joint nature of the 1916 offensive and a small cemetery containing equal numbers of Commonwealth and French graves lies at the foot of the memorial.

Canada's most impressive tribute overseas to those Canadians who fought and gave their lives in the First World War is the majestic and inspiring Canadian National Vimy Memorial which overlooks the Douai Plain from the highest point of Vimy Ridge, about ten kilometers north of Arras. The Memorial does more than mark the site of the engagement that Canadians were to remember with more pride than any other operation of the First World War.

The Australian National Memorial was inaugurated in 1938 to commemorate all Australian soldiers who fought in France and Belgium during the First World War. The names of over 10,000 Australian soldiers with no known grave are listed on its walls. The memorial is adjacent the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery and the Sir John Monash Centre.

The belfry of Bailleul is listed as UNESCO World Heritage. At the top of the tower, an onion dome carries the symbol of the city : the mermaid Melusine. Follow the guide and discover the turbulent history of the belfry. Once the 200 steps of the belfry climbed up, discover the view of the city and its surroundings.

The Ring of Remembrance is located at the summit of the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette plateau, opposite to the biggest of all French National War Cemetery. The International Memorial commemorates the names of the 579,606 soldiers, of all nationalities, who fought and lost their lives on the soil of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. Inaugurated on 11 November 2014 and designed by the architect Philippe Prost, this elliptical memorial was inspired by the circles children make in their games and designed as an open book in homage to the soldiers who fell in our region. It is an object of great aesthetic and symbolic power, evoking the mass death which occurred on the battlefields of this region between 1914 and 1918. Part of the structure uses a cantilever overhang to symbolise the fragility of peace. Soldiers’ names have been inscribed in alphabetical order, with no mention of nationality or religion. Among the names engraved on the memorial are those of Francois Faber, winner of the 1909 Tour de France; John Kipling, son of the poet Rudyard Kipling; Joseph Standing Buffalo, grandson of the Indian chief Sitting Bull; Hans Dulfer, the German alpinist; and Paul Mauk, the youngest German soldier enlisted. In the remembrance room of Lens' 14 - 18 Great War History center, you can use tablets to consult databases of the nearly 580,000 soldiers, of all nationalities, who fell in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. Their names are engraved on the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette International Memorial, which lists all the soldiers who died, were buried or commemorated within the Nord and Pas-de-Calais departments during the First World War. Using this data, you can find out everything about any given soldier: his date and place of birth; where he was recruited, his regiment and his rank; the date, place and cause of his death; as well as his place of burial, provided all of this information is known. The welcome team is on hand to help you research your family or locate a tomb or memorial within the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region.