Ypres

Ypres (Ieper in Dutch, and Wipers to the British soldiers who held it) is a West Flanders city of about 34,900 people across the town and the villages of Boezinge, Vlamertinge, Zillebeke and others. It was a wealthy cloth town in the Middle Ages, and then the centre of the Battles of Ypres between German and Allied forces, which left almost nothing standing. What visitors see today is a deliberate reconstruction of what was lost. The surrounding fields carry the cemeteries and memorials, and the ground stays quiet in a way that is hard to describe and easy to feel.