Notre Dame de Lorette National Cemetery

About

The national necropolis of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette is a French military cemetery and memorial located on the eponymous hill, 165 metres above sea level, on the territory of the commune of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire near Lens, in the department of Pas-de-Calais. Inaugurated in 1925, it commemorates the thousands of fighters who died on one of the most disputed battlefields of World War I between October 1914 and September 1915. Approximately 43,000 combatants are buried there, half of them in individual graves.

The site, including the cemetery, the basilica, the tower and the museum, has an area of more than 25 hectares. It is the largest French military necropolis. On the occasion of the centenary of the First World War, November 11, 2014, the President of the Republic François Hollande inaugurated an international memorial with the names of 600,000 soldiers who fell on the soil of the North and Pas-de-Calais between 1914 and 1918.

It is named Ring of Memory and located on the banks of the hill of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Since June 9, 2015, the history centre of the 14-18 Memorial has been chronologically and thematically retracing the events of the...