The best road cycling routes around Wavrille

Verdun is a very beautiful city that has been very important since the Middle Ages. It's lovely to walk through the place and admire it.

This is absolutely amazing!

On June 23, during the lightning German advance, the assault waves crossed Fleury and reached the Froidterre fortification. Along the way, they encountered fierce pockets of resistance. On the southern slope of the Ravin des Vignes, 400 Poilus (French infantrymen) dug in a vaulted gallery, buried 12 meters underground, recognizable from afar by its four ventilation shafts. In the stifling, overcrowded June days, the survivors, wounded or not, struggled to breathe, watching for the moment when they might be buried, gassed, or burned alive by flamethrowers. Their salvation came on June 23, when the 114th Battalion of Alpine Chasseurs heroically cleared the entrances, bayonets fixed.

On the Ruette side, passing through Pré Morel, you can reach the Ravel Latour Chenois, while avoiding the main road. On the Grandcourt side, you can reach St-Remy via a country road. On the Grandcourt side, you can also climb the Côte de Grandcourt (2.4 km at 5.5%) and continue on for a foray into Meurthe-et-Moselle (FR).

The Ossuary of Douaumont is an impressive memorial that holds the remains of more than 130,000 unknown French and German soldiers who died during the Battle of Verdun (1916). The bones are visible through small windows in the base – a confronting reminder of the horrors of war. In front of the ossuary is the Nécropole nationale de Douaumont, the largest French military cemetery of the First World War, with 16,142 graves, including a Muslim and Jewish plot. The complex was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023.

The Mémorial de Verdun, located near the ruined village of Fleury-devant-Douaumont, is a leading museum and commemoration site for the Battle of Verdun (1916). The museum displays more than 2,000 objects and uses authentic objects, photographs and audiovisual installations to show how French and German soldiers experienced this battle – in the exact same place where they fought.

Inaugurated in 1928, this war memorial in Verdun honours the city’s inhabitants who died for France in both world wars. It was built on the remains of a military butcher’s shop, on the crescent of the Chaussée, a 17th-century fortification. The sculpture depicts five soldiers – a cavalier, an engineer, an infantryman (poilu), an artilleryman and a territorial – forming a symbolic wall under the motto of Verdun: “On ne passe pas”.

The Myth of the First World War “In memory of the French soldiers who sleep standing, rifle in hand, in this trench – their brothers in America.” This is the inscription in front of the Memorial of the Battle of Verdun in the ghost town of Douaumont. The monument was financed by a wealthy American banker, George T. Rand, who was moved by the famous legend surrounding the site. It is said that French soldiers buried standing, with weapons in hand, died from enemy shells. Bayonet Trench is one of the myths of the First World War. In 1922, it was classified as a historical monument and in 2014 it was considered a site of national importance. After the war, excavations uncovered 21 bodies of French soldiers. Fourteen were identified and buried in the Necropolis of Fleury, opposite Douaumont. The seven other bodies that remained unknown were reburied in the "Bayonet Trench". For many, the myth persists, while others question it. Especially since no body was found standing upright. In any case, the legend of the "Bayonet Trenches" shows above all how much the Great War left an almost indelible mark on the collective imagination. As the bloody conflict of the Battle of Verdun drew to a close, glorious stories quickly emerged in which the nation sacrificed itself for the fatherland. Source: https://www.landofmemory.eu/sites-historiques/tranchee-des-baionnettes/