Mémorial 14-18 Notre-Dame de Lorette

Start your discovery of the 14-18 Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Memorial by the History Centre at the foot of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Hill. Its architecture made of black concrete cubes and its permanent exhibition with objects, large-format photographs, interactive maps and films of the period, provide an understanding of the Great War on our territory in the Nord Pas-de-Calais. Then climb (on foot or by car) to the top of the hill, where the bodies of 42,000 soldiers who died during the First World War on the Artois, French and Belgian Flanders fronts sleep forever. The Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Necropolis is today the largest French military cemetery. The place imposes silence. In order to remember and pay tribute to all these lives sacrificed, the Anneau de la Mémoire has been collecting since 2014 the names of nearly 550,000 soldiers who fell on the soil of the Nord Pas-de-Calais between 1914 and 1918. Their names were François Faber, John Kipling, Catherine MacDonald or Paul Zschiesche... United in death, their names parade on these golden panels, without distinction of nationality or rank.