Ieper - City of Belgium

Ieper is a Belgian municipality located in the Flemish province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Ypres and the villages of Boezinge, Brielen, Dikkebus, Elverdinge, Hollebeke, Sint-Jan, Vlamertinge, Voormezele, Zillebeke, and Zuidschote.

During World War I, Ypres was the centre of intense and sustained battles between the German and the Allied forces.

In the First Battle of Ypres the Allies captured the town from the Germans. In the Second Battle of Ypres the Germans used poison gas for the first time on the Western Front and captured high ground east of the town. The first gas attack occurred against Canadian, British, and French soldiers; including both metropolitan French soldiers as well as Senegalese and Algerian tirailleurs from French Africa. The gas used was chlorine gas. Mustard gas, also called Yperite from the name of this city, was also used for the first time near Ypres in the autumn of 1917.

Of the battles, the largest, best-known, and most costly in human suffering was the Third Battle of Ypres in which the British, Canadians, ANZAC and French forces recaptured the Passchendaele ridge east of the city at a terrible cost of lives. After months of fighting, this battle resulted in nearly half a million casualties to all sides, and only several miles of ground won by Allied forces. The town was all but obliterated by the artillery fire.

After the war the town was rebuilt using money paid by Germany in reparations, with the main square, including the Cloth Hall and town hall, being rebuilt as close to the original designs as possible. The Cloth Hall today is home to In Flanders Fields Museum, dedicated to Ypres's role in the First World War.

Ypres these days has the title of "city of peace" and maintains a close friendship with another town on which war had a profound impact Hiroshima. The association may be regarded as somewhat gruesome because both towns witnessed warfare at its worst Ypres was one of the first places where chemical warfare was employed, while Hiroshima suffered the debut of nuclear warfare. The city governments of Ypres and Hiroshima advocate for cities never to be targets again and campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The City of Ypres hosts the international campaign secretariat of Mayors for Peace, an international Mayoral organization mobilizing cities and citizens worldwide to abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020. Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign.

The Menin Gate Memorial2 in Ypres commemorates those soldiers of the British Commonwealth with the exception of New Zealand and Newfoundland who fell in the Ypres Salient during the First World War before 16 August 1917, who have no known grave. Those who died from that date and all from New Zealand and Newfoundland are commemorated elsewhere. The memorial's location is especially poignant as it lies on the eastward route from the town which allied soldiers would have taken towards the fighting many never to return.

Every evening since 1928, traffic around the imposing arches of the Menin Gate Memorial has been stopped while the Last Post is sounded beneath the Gate by the local fire brigade. This tribute is given in honour of the memory of British Empire soldiers who fought and died there.

The ceremony was prohibited by occupying German forces during the Second World War, but it was resumed on the very evening of liberation 6 September 1944 notwithstanding the heavy fighting that still went on in other parts of the town. The lions that marked the original gate were given to Australia by the people of Belgium and can be found at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.