Five things to do in Ypres

Ypres might be small, but this vibrant city is full of things to see and do. Join us for a quick tour around Ypres and some of its top attractions.

Things to do in Ypres

1. Visit the Cloth Hall & Market Square

Image: Ypres Cloth Hall in all its Gothic splendour (Wikimedia Commons)

Looking at the cobbled streets, beautiful gabled houses, and Medieval grandeur of the city centre, it’s hard to believe that Ieper, the Flemish name for Ypres, was flattened into a barely recognisable pile of rubble during the First World War.

The most devastated city on the Western Front, Ypres was pummelled by the near constant combat in and around it during the First World War.

Thankfully, Ypres was able to rise from the devastation while maintaining its original character and charm. Nothing symbolises this more than Ypres’s magnificent Cloth Hall and surrounding Grote Markt marketplace.

The Cloth Hall was originally built in the 13th century as a warehouse and main market for the city’s burgeoning cloth and textiles industry. Essentially destroyed in the First World War, it was painstakingly restored to its pre-war condition in the 1930s, restoring its fabulous splendour.

Image: Ypres, Rowland H. Hill, 1919 - the oil painting shows the devastation Ypres suffered during the First World War (IWM (Art.IWM ART 2755))

Likewise, the neighbouring St. Martin’s Cathedral was also heavily damaged in wartime and thoroughly restored

Inside the Cloth Hall is the In Flanders Field Museum, which tells the story of the Ypres Salient through artefacts, interactive exhibits and more.

The Cloth Hall sits at the centre of Ypres’ old marketplace, the Grote Markt. It’s still a lively and bustling public space, ringed with beautiful buildings offering a variety of eateries, restaurants, bars and taverns. Spending an evening with a cool drink and some good food and good company in the Grote Markt is a must for all Ypres visitors.

2. Go on a tour (or build your own)

Image: Battlefield and cemetery tours are an ideal family holiday activity

One of the best ways to experience Ypres is to take a tour, whether by bike, car, coach, or on foot.

Because of its World War history, many of the package and independent tours focus on the battlefields and memorials of the Ypres Salient. A wide variety of tours are organised annually by a multitude of operators for all budgets.

Some iconic Great War battles took place near Ypres, and so battlefield tours are very popular. The Ypres Salient still bears the scars of the fighting to this day. A handful of the sites in and around Ypres tours visit include:

• CWGC cemeteries and memorials, including Tyne Cot and the Menin Gate
• Polygon Wood
• Hill 60
• Messines Ridge
• Passchendaele
• Hooge Crate
• Sanctuary Wood

According to Tripadvisor, the top ten recommended tours around Ypres are almost all First World War-focused. However, you may wish to incorporate other aspects of Ypres’ past into your tour.

Its magnificent ramparts, for example, ring the city centre and are some of the best preserved in Belgium – well worth working into any self-guided tour!

Image: Discover the history of our sites and the stories of those we commemorate on a guided tour

Speaking of self-guided tours, they are an ideal way to experience all Ypres has to offer at your own pace. While your itinerary and plans are entirely in your hands, we can help push you in the right direction.

With our partners Westtoer, we have created three suggested tours of West Flanders that explore the region’s landscape and its connection to the First World War. Our tour themes cover:

• Landscape – A half-day tour highlighting the scars that still blight the Ypres Salient, some of its last remaining original battlefield features, and how CWGC sites there were shaped by the First World War.
• Passchendaele, the 3rd Ypres Offensive – Passchendaele was one of the most infamous campaigns of the Great War. Experience its story via our sites on this half-day tour.
• Must See – Only got time for one tour of Ieper’s former battlefields? This is the one for you. It covers some of our most iconic Ypres Salient sites, including Tyne Cot and the Menin Gate, that tell the story of the region’s startling wartime experience.

Begin building your tour today.

3. Explore Independent museums & attractions

Image: Kazmatten Brewery; once the home of the Wipers Gazette, now an award-winning brewery (Facebook)

A site as historically rich as Ypres is well served by museums and attractions that reveal the city’s tumultuous past.

One of the most popular is the independently owned and operated Hooge Crater Museum. Featuring impeccable collections from two local collectors and history enthusiasts, it’s an excellent journey through Ypres’ wartime experience. It’s also situated just over the road from Hooge Crater Cemetery too!

Reminders of the Great War are everywhere in and around Ypres. One of the most overlooked by no less interesting, sits close to Essex Farm Cemetery.

Site John McCrae is the preserved remains of an Advanced Dressing Station. Restored in 1999, these low blockhouses were used to treat wounded soldiers on the frontline. Inside one of these low stone huts, war poet John McCrae wrote the famous “In Flanders Fields”. One to watch for lovers of literature and history!

Back in Ypres, we can find the best-preserved ramparts in Belgium. During the war, casemates were used as living quarters, medical centres, ammunition dumps and sanctuaries against shelling. Tucked away in one of the remaining preserved rampart casemates is Kazematten Brewery.

British troops used the casemates as an officers’ mess during the Great War. Their command post, common room and field hospital were all located at the ironically nicknamed ‘Hotel des Ramparts’. It was also here that the British soldiers printed their satirical newspaper The Wipers Times.

Flanders has a long tradition of brewing and beer culture, but with its unique location and history, Kazematten might be the most interesting of Ypres’ brewers.

4. See the Menin Gate Last Post Ceremony

Image: Each and every evening, you can hear the solemn strains of the Last Post drift over Ypres (© Eric Copelle)

Among the most moving tributes to the fallen of the Great War is the Last Post Ceremony, held underneath the triumphal arches of the mighty Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.

For nearly a century, each day at 8 pm, the traffic is halted and the city pauses to hear the plaintive, mournful strains of the Last Post on the Bugle. The musicians play their sad tune in honour of the memory of the soldiers of the British Empire and its allies who died in the Ypres Salient.

Over 54,000 of those soldiers, with no known grave, are commemorated by name on the Menin Gate’s name panels; a visual reminder of the cost of warfare to reinforce the bugler’s music.

The Last Post at the Menin Gate is one of the most moving ceremonies commemorating the Great War’s fallen. Despite it occurring nearly every evening since 1928, pausing only for the Second World War, it has lost none of its emotive potency.

The Last Post Association, which organises the ceremony, has performed over 33,600 ceremonies since July 1928. It’s a must for any First World War history enthusiasts and all Ypres visitors.

5. Relax and unwind at the CWGC Visitor Centre

Image: Have you visited our Ieper Visitor Centre yet?

Our new visitor centre stands at the heart of Commemoration in Belgium, directly across from the Menin Gate. It forms the perfect starting point for visiting the battlefields of the Ypres Salient and beyond – but also stands as a little oasis of calm in the centre of Ypres; a place where you can explore nearby and personal history at your own pace.

Here, you can:

• Enjoy some refreshments and take the weight of the world off in Blomfeld’s, our brand new tea room
• Browse the shop for Commonwealth War Graves gifts and merchandise, including books, battlefield site maps, and more (all proceeds are directly invested in our worldwide education and outreach programmes)
• Use the CWGC database to learn more about who we commemorate – you may even find your relatives!
• Grab a biodegradable wreath for an eco-friendly tribute for your next cemetery or memorial visit

Visit us on your next trip to Belgium to learn more about who we are, what we do, and the people in our care.

Travelling to Ypres

Ypres is located in West Flanders, Belgium. It sits close to the French-Belgian border.

The city is easily accessible.

From Calais, it takes around an hour and 15 minutes along the A16 motorway towards Lille to reach Ypres by car. It is about one and a half hours from Brussels.

Trains regularly run from Brussels to Ypres. There is no direct UK train, but travellers can take the Eurostar from London St. Pancras to Lille Europe and change for a train to Ypres there. Likewise, international trains from across Europe will use Lille Europe as a terminus/hub when heading to Ypres.

The nearest airports to Ypres are Lille Airport or Ostend-Bruges Airport.

Ypres and the First World War

Image: Canadian soldiers carry a wounded comrade over the shell-torn landscape of Passchendaele (IWM (CO 2252))

The battles of the Ypres Salient represent some of the fiercest fighting and trench warfare of the First World War.

Starting in October 1914 with the First Battle of Ypres, the city was the site of no less than six major battles across the length of the war, with as many as 30 other engagements and actions taking place there.

The first battle was triggered during the early mobile phase of the war on the Western Front as opposing forces looked to outflank each other. The Imperial German army sought to advance through Belgium, while the Allies looked to protect the channel ports and guard their important supply lines.

No breakthrough was achieved. Stalemate set in.

The Second Battle of Ypres began with a German attack north of the city in an area where Allied lines were surrounded on three sides. The Allies were pushed back three miles, but the Germans failed to break through.

The Second Battle is also notable as the first-time gas was used on the Western Front as an offensive weapon.

Perhaps the most famous of the Ypres battles was the Third Battle of Ypres, aka Passchendaele. Running from July to November 1917, Passchendaele initially started well for the Allies. Poor wet weather and strong German defences meant the first attacks stalled.

Drier weather arrived in September, and the Allies began to make some gains, but the poor weather returned the following month, signalling more atrocious conditions and harsh combat.

German forces suffered heavy casualties at battles along the Menin Road Ridge, Polygoon Wood, and Broodseinde. Heavy rain washed over the Passchendaele battlefields in October, turning the battlefield into a churning, muddy morass, where going forward was all but impossible.

The offensive was halted in November with the capture of Passchendaele village at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dead, missing and wounded servicemen over five months.

Today, Passchendaele is a byword for the mass slaughter of the Western Front. Its former battlefields still bear the scars of the battle, over a hundred years on.

To make matters worse, the British suffered major reversals in Spring 1918 when the German Army launched its ill-fated Spring Offensive. The high ground taken at such a cost at Passchendaele was lost. The final year of the war would not be easy.

The last major battle fought in Ypres took place between September 28 and October 2 1918, also known as the Battle of the Peaks of Flanders. British, French, and Belgian divisions went back into the battlefields of the Ypres Salient for the final time, breaking through the German lines and retaking their lost territory.

Ypres Cemeteries and Memorials

Such was the scale of the fighting and slaughter around Ypres that many of our largest cemeteries and memorials lie on its former battlefields.

For example, the Menin Gate commemorates by name more than 54,000 officers and enlisted men from five Commonwealth nations, with no known war graves. The CWGC’s New Irish Farm Cemetery, Hooge Crater Cemetery and Bedford House Cemetery are located on the outskirts of the city, all of which hold thousands of First World War casualties, as does Tyne Cot, our largest cemetery in the world, located a short drive outside the city.

You can learn more about our cemeteries and memorials in Ypres here.