After examining the file submitted by Belgium with the support of France, the 45th enlarged session of the World Heritage Committee decided to inscribe 139 French, German, Belgian, American and Commonwealth funerary and memorial sites from the First World War, spread across France (96 sites in Hauts-de-France, Île-de-France and the Grand-Est) and in Belgium (43 sites in Flanders and Wallonia) on the UNESCO world heritage list.
4 Ardennes sites
Initiated by France and Belgium in the early 2010s during the implementation of the commemorations of the Centenary of the Great War, this inscription continues the work of transmitting the memory and history of the First World War, shared by many countries around the world. Le Ardennes County Council has been associated with this process since the beginning of the case.
Among the sites selected 4 are from the Ardennes :
- The German Cemetery of Chestres and the national necropolis of Chestres, near Vouziers
- The German Monument in the Saint-Charles cemetery in Sedan
- The Square of the Dead of November 11, 1918 in Vrigne-Meuse
- The Apremont German Cemetery.
Towards global recognition of the tragedy of the First World War
The funerary sites, spread between Flanders, Wallonia, North and North-East France, embody the horror of the first world conflict, which left 10 million dead from 130 countries, and 20 million amputees. Indeed, the list retained by Unesco testifies to its global character: a Portuguese cemetery, an Indian memorial, or even the largest Chinese cemetery in France, in Noyelles-sur-Mer (north), where 842 Chinese who worked for the British army in the rear are buried from the forehead.
The inclusion of these funerary and memorial sites from the First World War on the UNESCO World Heritage List thus constitutes a unique opportunity for the transmission of national memory as well as global memory. It represents a step towards global recognition of the global tragedy that was the First World War.
To learn more
You can :
- visit the War and Peace Museum in Novion-Porcien in the Ardennes. This unique museum is dedicated to the three major conflicts that shaped contemporary Europe : the war of 1870; the Great War 1914-1918; the Second World War 1939-1945.
- go to the high places of the 3 wars in the Ardennes
Themes
