"IEPER - YPRES, The City of Peace" a Ieper Travel Page by Martinewezel

The Westhoek is the name of the western part of Flanders. It is flat, soggy country where people speak Flemish, a kind of Dutch. Flanders (Vlaanderen in Flemish) holds old and famous cities like Antwerp, Bruges and Ypres. It is ancient battleground. For centuries the fields of Flanders have been soaked with blood.

Wherever you visit the battlefields of the great war in the Westhoek, you'll find poppies. They became the symbol of the Great War's poetry.

Why poppies?

"One of the most asked questions is: why poppies? The answer is simple: poppies only flower when everything else in the neighbourhood is dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, and only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout. There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his famous poem In Flanders' Fields, around him poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before."

Early in the 12th century, Ypres became one of the most important cities of the county of Flanders.

Together with its rivals Brugge and Gent, the city lived of cloth manufacture and cloth trade.

The 14th century was marked with a lot of political and social unrest and announced the end of Ypres' prosperity.
Shortage of wool, reduction of the consuming markets, the epidemic of 1316... Ieper went through a period of decline.

In the 17th and 18th centuries the city was changed by its successive occupiers into a giant fortress.
the architect Vauban, built large defense walls built around the city and the city fell asleep, loosing all it's strategic and economic importance.

The town came again into the spotlights during the First World War. Ypres was situated right in the middle of the frontline between the Germans and the Allied troops. An almost complete destruction of the city was the result.

After the war, it took more than 40 years to totally rebuild the city. Now Ypres is even more beautiful than before.