Ieper

It's an interesting place - dealing with the long history it has an important city for many centuries, with an enormous interest in it as an iconic WW1 name. It works hard as a town to shake the 'everything is about war' focus that so many its visitors seem to have. It was a real shame to be such a shock to the wonderful staff in the other town museums - that we would visit them as well as "in Flanders Fields". 

But Ieper is trying to deal with the past positively - it calls itself "city of peace" and maintains links with Hiroshima, similarly devastated in a different war. The city keeps this focus through the displays in the "In Flanders Fields" museum - lots of focus on the horror of the war, with no punches apparently pulled - very different to many museums in the UK. Including many encouragements to respond to the horror by working and planning for peace...

The town has created a peace trail around what is left of the old Vauban defences, and has given space to a wonderful initiative  CWRM (http://www.comingworldrememberme.be/en/project-1) to help connect the present generations with WW1.