The cemeteries and memorials of Ypres and West Flanders

The Ypres Salient was one of the busiest, bloodiest sectors of the Western Front, so naturally the Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains many cemeteries and memorials in Ypres and the surrounding area.

Ypres Cemeteries & Memorials

War memorials in Ypres

Commonwealth War Graves Commission war memorials commemorate fallen service personnel of the World Wars with no known grave.

The nature of the fighting on the Ypres Salient meant hundreds of thousands of men’s remains were never recovered or were impossible to identify post-war. 

War memorials in Ypres provide a focal point for the commemoration of these missing soldiers and officers.

Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial

Image: The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, possibly CWGC's most recognisable war memorial in Ieper

The largest and most iconic of CWGC’s Ypres war memorials is the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.

Hundreds of thousands of Commonwealth soldiers marched down the Menin Road to reach the battlefields of the Ypres Salient during the Great War. The memorial sits astride the road in testament to the enormous loss of life experienced in and around the city.

Over 54,500 casualties from the UK, Canada, India, Australia, and South Africa killed on the Ypres Salient before 16 August 1917 with no known war grave are commemorated by the Menin Gate.

The Menin Gate Memorial has stood for nearly a century. It was opened on 24 July 1927 at a ceremony led by Field Marshal Sir Herbert Plumer who summed up the philosophy behind the construction of CWGC’s memorials in his speech:

“The hearts of the people throughout the Empire went out to them and it was resolved that here at Ypres, where so many of the missing are known to have fallen, there should be erected a Memorial worthy of them which should give expression to the Nation’s gratitude for their sacrifice and their sympathy with those who mourned them.

"A Memorial has been erected which, in its simple grandeur, fulfils this object, and now it can be said of each one in whose honour we are assembled here today:

"‘He is not missing: he is here!’”

The Menin Gate still stands proudly over one of the town’s main roads but, over the years, it has acquired a patina and wear and tear befitting to nearly a century of existence.

The memorial is currently undergoing a comprehensive restoration to bring it back in line with its original glory. Read more about our progress here.

Tyne Cot Memorial

Image: A small section of the Tyne Cot Memorial, making the cemetery boundary wall and the furthest part reached by the Allies in Flanders during the First World War

While Tyne Cot grabs the headlines as the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission site in the world, did you know it’s the site of one of the biggest memorials to the missing too?

The Tyne Cot Memorial forms the rear boundary wall of Tyne Cot Cemetery, marking the furthest point the Allies reached in Flanders in the First World War.

Almost 35,000 names of Commonwealth officers and enlisted men with no known war grave adorn its panels, those lost on the battlefields of the Ypres Salient after 16 August 1917 to the November 11 Armistice.

The memorial, designed by Sir Herbert Baker with sculpture by Joseph Armitage and F.V. Blundstone, was unveiled by Sir Gilbert Dyett on 20 June 1927.

Messines Ridge (N.Z.) Memorial

Image: The Messines Ridge (New Zealand) Memorial, one of seven French and Belgian memorials to New Zealand's missing of the World Wars

Messines, present-day Mesen, and its high ground was a hotly contested piece of high ground during the First World War.

It was first captured by the German 26th Division in November 1914, and it wasn’t until the Battle of Messines in June 1917 that it was retaken by the New Zealand Division.

In the German Spring Offensive of early 1918, Messines was lost again, despite a spirited defence by the South African Brigade, before being finally taken by the Allies in September 1918.

The Messines Ridge (New Zealand) Memorial lies within Messines Ridge British Cemetery, commemorating more than 800 Kiwi soldiers who died in or near Messines between 1917-1918 with no known war grave.

Rather than commemorate their missing on memorials like the Menin Gate, the New Zealand government decided instead to build memorials at sites appropriate to where the nation's soldiers were killed. 

There are now seven such memorials to the missing of New Zealand in France and Belgium.

Ploegsteert Memorial

Image: The lesser-known Ploegsteert Memorial commemorates more than 11,000 Commonwealth First World War servicemen with no known war grave

The Ploegsteert Memorial is one of CWGC’s lesser-known memorials to the missing yet is still an important point of commemoration.

More than 11,000 First World War casualties with no known war grave are commemorated by the Ploegsteert Memorial.

Notably, around a tenth of the men commemorated at Ploegsteert date from one day: 12 April 1918. This was the height of the Battle of the Lys where Commonwealth troops fought a desperate battle to hold back waves of marauding German Army soldiers during Germany's last major Western Front offensive.

The majority of those commemorated by the Ploegsteert Memorial fell in the extreme south of the Ypres Salient and north of Lille, northern France. 

While closely related to the Battle of the Lys, many of the men named on the memorial were not killed in major offensives, rather they died during the day-to-day of frontline military life, such as on patrol, or in small scale actions which supported the major attacks.

Ypres War Cemeteries

West Flanders is home to over 200 CWGC cemeteries and memorials and around 150 are located in the former Ypres Salient.

The first battle at Ypres took place in October 1914 with the final taking place during the Advance to Flanders which concluded, four years later, in October 1918. 

Sadly, hundreds of thousands of service personnel from across the Ypres Salient were killed in some of the bloodiest battles of the Great War. Their war graves are cared for in perpetuity at sites across Ypres and its surrounding former battlefields.

Ypres Town Cemetery & Extension

Image: Ypres Town Cemetery Extension was built once the existing civilian burial ground became too small to contain Commonwealth losses

With the establishment of the Ypres Salient in October 1914, casualties began to mount. Some of the earliest burials from the battles of the Salient were made in existing civilian cemeteries.

Ypres Town Cemetery holds 120 burials dating from October to November 1914 during which time the city and surrounding countryside were aflame with the First Battle of Ypres.

The only British Royal to die in combat during the First World War, Prince Maurice of Battenberg, is buried at Ypres Town Cemetery. King George V offered for his nephew’s body to be repatriated but his mother, Princess Beatrice, refused, wishing for her son to be buried alongside his friends and comrades.

The Town Cemetery was extended in October 1914 and was used up until April 1915. It was expanded again on two occasions in 1918 when it reached its present size, holding over 500 war graves, including five staff officers killed in the shelling of Hooge Crater. 

Ypres Reservoir Cemetery

Image: Ypres Reservoir Cemetery stands on the site of three former war cemeteries 

Ypres was battered by artillery more intensely than any other major town on the Western Front throughout the First World War.

German forces had seized high ground around the city during the First Battle of Ypres, and ,come the Second, in April 1915, heavily bombarded the medieval city centre. The town’s historic buildings, including the beautiful Cloth Hall, were devastated and destroyed.

Even amidst the rubble, certain structures remained distinguishable, including Ypres City Prison, reservoir and water tower. 

A series of burial grounds were built here during the war. The last of these was previously called the “Cemetery North of the Prison” before its name was changed to Ypres Reservoir Cemetery.

Ypres Reservoir Cemetery was used from early 1915 until the end of the war on the Western Front. It holds 2,600 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, roughly half of which are unidentified.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

Image: Tyne Cot Cemetery is the largest CWGC war cemetery in the world

In July 1917, the Allies launched the Third Battle of Ypres to clear German forces from the low ridges surrounding the Ypres Salient.

British, South African, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand troops were put into action and, over some of the most horrific battlefields the Western Front had to offer, achieved their objectives.

Fighting clustered and climaxed around the village of Passchendaele, particularly in Third Ypres’ final phases in October and November 1917.

On 4 October, the 3rd Australian Division captured a series of concrete German blockhouses on the ridge below Passchendaele. One of these bunkers was particularly large and, after its capture, was used as a dressing and casualty clearing station. 

The remains of these bunkhouses can be seen today in Tyne Cot Cemetery where burials from The Battle of Passchendaele rest eternally.

Nearly 12,000 First World War Commonwealth war graves lie in Tyne Cot, making it the largest CWGC cemetery in the world. Tyne Cot's Cross of Sacrifice sits atop the remains of the largest bunkhouse, a detail suggested by King George V on his visit to the Western Front’s battlefields in the early 1920s.

Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery

Image: Lijssenthoek was the site of a major medical hub during the Great War, reflected in the size of the war cemetery

The ferocity of the combat in the Ypres Salient is reflected in the size of the largest CWGC sites in West Flanders, such as Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery.

Lijssenthoek, a small village near Poperinghe, sat on the main communication line between the Allied rear and the Ypres front. It was easy to access and out of range of the German artillery, making it the ideal place to build medical facilities.

A farm, known to the British troops as Remy Farm, was turned into one of the sector’s key casualty clearing and medical hubs.

Lijssenthoek was first started by the French Army, which established the 15th Hospital D’Evacuation there. 

Once the British took over in 1915, the medical facilities greatly expanded. 

Railway tracks were laid to ferry the severely wounded back to larger military hospitals on the channel coast. At its peak, Lijssenthoek held 4,000 hospital beds. 

Lijssenthoek was used until the spring of 1918 when medical teams were pulled back in the face of the German Spring Offensive

Lijssenthoek is one of the largest cemeteries in West Flanders and indeed the world. Nearly 10,000 Commonwealth burials can be found here, alongside over 880 war graves of non-Commonwealth nationalities, including 35 members of the Chinese Labour Corps are buried at Lijssenthoek.. 

Ypres Cemeteries & Memorials Map

Visiting Ypres Battlefields

Best Ypres battlefield sites to visit

The town of Ieper, the modern-day name for Ypres, sat at the heart of one of the busiest, bloodiest sectors of the Western Front.

Strategically importance because of its proximity to the channel ports, Ypres was fought over time and again during the Great War. A frontline bulge of fortifications and trenches grew around Ieper, which became known as the Ypres Salient.

The Ypres Salient spanned around 9.2 square miles, covering small villages, thick woodland, low ridges, and eventually a web of trench networks and fortifications, separated by the churned, crater-marked ground and barbed wire of No Man’s Land.

Today, the scars of the Great War, now over a century old, still mark the landscape, physical reminders of the terrible events of the early 20th century.

Away from the cemeteries and memorials commemorating the dead of the Ypres Salient, some other sites of historical interest to visit include:

• Polygon Wood
• Hill 60
• Messines Ridge
• Ploegsteert Wood
• Passchendaele
• Hooge Crater
• Sanctuary Wood & Hill 62
• Bluff Crater

You can read more in our visitors guide to the battlefields of Ypres.

Ypres and the Great War

Major battles fought at Ypres

Image: The shattered remains of Ieper Cloth Hall showing the devastation wrought upon the city during the First World War (© IWM (Q 61646))

West Flanders had been the site of many great conflicts and battles for its millennia-long history, but none have had such a lasting impact as those fought here during the Great War.

The first Allied troops reached Ypres on October 13, dragging the ancient city into a thoroughly modern conflict.

Over the next four years, the town would be pulverised, as warfare turned the majestic medieval town centre into rubble.

First Battle of Ypres

Following the retreat from Mons and the Miracle on the Marne, the Allies and their Imperial German counterparts were engaged in a period of movement called “The Race to the Sea”.

Neither side was actually trying to reach the coast. Instead, each was trying to outmanoeuvre their opponents to turn their flank, and essentially ran out of room.

The climax of this critical phase of the war on the Western Front fell at Ypres. Between October and November 1914, French, British, and Belgian soldiers clashed with the Imperial German Army for control of the strategically important city. 

The Allies held Ypres at great cost but the city, despite German efforts, remained in their hands until the end of the war.

During the Race to the Sea, the armies began to build trench networks and fortifications to check their opponents’ advance. 

Following the first Ypres battle, the German Army withdrew to high ground around the city. A bulge in the line developed as both sides dug in and trench networks began to spiderweb out from Ypres. 

This was the Ypres Salient. It was to become one of the most storied, bloody sectors of the Western Front.

Second Battle of Ypres

Image: Soldiers of the King's Regiment (Liverpool Scottish) at St. Eloi, April-May 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres (© IWM Q 49836))

The German Army launched another attempt to capture Ypres in April 1915. Here, it deployed a weapon that would become synonymous with the Western Front: gas.

Canadian positions in the Salient were the first Commonwealth troops to experience the shock of gas attacks that would soon become commonplace. The confusion caused by this new weapon initially destabilised the line, but the Germans still could not find a breakthrough. 

Like First Ypres, the Second Battle saw heavy casualties on both sides, but the city remained in Allied control.

Battle of Messines

While it’s easy to think the generals of the First World War learned nothing from their experiences and continued to send men to their deaths in costly human wave attacks, this isn’t the case.

Those in command did intensely study and develop their tactics and strategies as the war progressed. We can see this in British preparations for the Battle of Messines in June 1917.

Overseen by General and later Field Marshal Herbert Plumer, the Battle for Messines was meticulously planned. Plumer combined artillery, mining, infantry, tanks, and aerial recon to devastating effect to win a great victory at Messines.

The high ground at Messines Ridge had been in German hands since the earliest days of the fighting at Ypres. 

On the morning of 7 June 1917, it was rent asunder by 19 mines detonated beneath German positions. Thousands of German defenders were killed and many more were shaken psychologically by the impact.

Creeping artillery barrages provided cover for the advancing Commonwealth infantry, guided by photo recon planes. Supported by tanks, the thoroughly-drilled foot soldiers were able to take and hold their positions, capturing 7,000 prisoners in a matter of hours.

The Third Battle of Ypres

Image: View from a captured German pill box, Lys, (© IWM (Q 2901)

Immortalised in art, poetry, literature and song, the Third Battle of Ypres is better known as the Battle of Passchendaele.

Following the success at Messines, the Allies launched further offensives in Flanders, this time centring the attack on the village of Passchendaele.

Horrendous weather coupled with the destruction of Flanders's irrigation and draining systems had turned the landscape into a sucking morass of blood, mud, and wire.

From July to November 1917, Commonwealth troops, including British, South African, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian servicemen, fought on the mud-and-blood-soaked ground of Passchendaele.

The Allies made some significant gains, particularly in the September phase of the battle, but poor weather returned in October. Casualties began to mount and by November, the Third Battle of Ypres was over.

Today, the Tyne Cot Memorial marks the first point reached by the Allies reached in Flanders during the Great War, reached at the Battle of Passchendaele.

The Battle of the Lys

Over 260,000 casualties were taken by both sides at the Battle of Passchendaele but to make matters worse for the British, their gains in Flanders were completely reversed in the spring of 1918.

In March 1918, the German Army launched The Spring Offensive: one last massive Western Front attack aimed at breaking the Allied positions and winning the war once and for all.

After making great strides in northern France, German High Command launched an assault on Flanders on positions along the River Lys in April 1918.

Utilising stormtrooper-led assault tactics, the German Army was able to recapture huge swathes of land taken by the Allies in 1917, including the ground won at such a high cost at Passchendaele.

Eventually stopped by the ANZACs, the German attack on the Lys petered out by the end of April. After the Spring Offensive, the Imperial German Army was essentially broken. 

Come August, the Allies would launch the Hundred Days Offensive, eventually winning the war on the Western Front. 

Visit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Ypres

Our new Ieper visitor centre stands at the heart of commemoration in Belgium directly across from the Menin Gate.

It forms the perfect starting point when visiting the WW1 battlefields and the cemeteries and memorials when those who fell are today commemorated. Our multi-language team are on hand. You can: 

• Discover more about our cemeteries and memorials in Ieper and the work of our teams in Belgium and around the world.
• Purchase souvenirs from our gift shop. All proceeds are directly invested in our educational and outreach projects worldwide.  
• Purchase your biodegradable wreath – we can even keep it safe for you until the Last Post. 
  Undertake research on the CWGC database – you can discover if we commemorate your relative or let us assist you with a research project and help find the graves you’re looking for.
• Join a guided tour of the Menin Gate - learn more about the iconic memorial and discover some of the stories of the Commonwealth casualties commemorated there. 

We can't wait to greet you in Ieper. See you there.