Portal:Belgium/Selected article/2006/November

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The Menin Gate Memorial at the eastern exit of the town of Ypres in Flanders, Belgium, marks the starting point for one of the main roads out of the town that led Allied soldiers to the front line during World War I. Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and built by the British government, the Menin Gate Memorial opened on July 24, 1927 as a monument dedicated to the missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the fierce battles around the Ypres Salient area who have no known grave.

The "Gate" was merely the gap in the city's star-shaped fortifications designed by Louis XIV's engineer Vauban, which were pointless in the age of shelling: Ypres was reduced to rubble.

Reginald Blomfield's triumphal arch, designed in 1921, is the entry to the barrel-vaulted passage for traffic through the mausoleum that honors the Missing, who have no known graves. The patient lion on the top is the lion of Britain but also the lion of Flanders. Its large "Hall of Memory" contains the names of 54,896 soldiers who died before August 15, 1917, incised into vast panels. Menin Gate Memorial does not list the names of the missing of New Zealand and Newfoundland soldiers who are honoured on separate memorials. It was chosen to be a memorial as it was the closest gate of the town to fighting.