Flemish heritage minister Geert Bourgeois last week unveiled plans for the new Memorial Park in the province of West Flanders to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. The plans were drawn up by a consortium of Flemish and Dutch designers and were chosen from among a number of projects entered in competition for the contract.
The Memorial Park will join 40 battlefield sites - currently isolated from each other - together in a network telling the story of the war through the landscape of the area of West Flanders, where most of the fighting took place. Five sites are already the subject of detailed design plans: the area around the mouth of the river IJzer in Nieuwpoort (Nieuport); the network of sites between the IJzerdijk and the Frontzate (lit. Front saddle) footpath in Diksmuide (DIxmude); the site of the Third Battle of Ypres (31st July - 11th November 1917); the road to Passchendaele in Zonnebeke; and the Ypres Salient around Ypres and the Wijtschate (Wytschate) Salient in the Heuvelland region.
'Few European landscapes are so intimately connected to their history as the area of the front in 1914 to 1918," Bourgeois said. "There are relics of the war, like bunkers and craters, and places created especially to commemorate the war and the war dead such as cemeteries, monuments, museums and tourist routes. The former front is a landscape of remembrance - a web of elements that bind us to the past. The Memorial park's aim is to reinforce that web."
However, Bourgeois stressed that the intention is not to turn the area into a sort of First World War theme park. Flanders expects an upsurge in "war tourism" in the run-up to 1914, as well as during the following four years, but Bourgeois made it clear the Memorial Park is intended to serve even after those celebrations have passed.
Alan Hope in Flanders Today, February 15, 2012
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