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Did you know that Ieper ( Ypres ) was as powerful a city in the old county of Flanders as Brugge ( Bruges ) and Gent ( Ghent ) ? The Hall Tower and the Cloth Hall witness to the wealth of the years 1200 - 1300.

Ypres used to be a very important center for the cloth industry. The Cloth Hall was used as a storage accommodation for the production of cloth, woven mostly with wool imported from England and Scotland. Today the building is occupied by the In Flanders Fields Museum which more than deserves your visit. 

The Cloth Hall with it's 132 m of façade length is one of the major gothic civil constructions of the middle ages in Western Europe. Above it thrones the Hall Tower. The building is a  powerful illustration of the wealth and self consciousness of the medieval citizen.

Entering Ieper ( Ypres ) through the Menenpoort (Menin Gate), built by Sir Reginald Blomfield. Since 1928 every evening at eight o'clock sharp, buglars play here the Last Post in remembrance of the fallen in the Ypres Salient.

"The "Exhortation" is often recited, the fourth of the seven stanzas of Laurence Binyon 's poem "For the Fallen"  (September 1914):

"They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down on the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

The public answers with the last words of the verse:
"We will remember them"

Ypres and the Salient have been heavily marked with the horror of World War 1.  November 11. is Remembrance Day. The Poppy Parade marches from St George's Memorial Church to the Menin Gate, as poppies became the symbol for the war at the Western Front and in the Ypres Salient.

The Albion Hotel at night. From the Market Square (Grote Markt) you alreaydy notice the lighted façade. The Albion Hotel is situated at the heart of the city, inside the historic walls of Ypres. 

Todays entrance of the hotel has been rebuilt as it looked before World War 1. At the same place there was a 17th century house with an identical step gable and windows which referred to the style of Flemish renaissance. Beautifully welled ornamental wall-ties testify of the excellent taste of that period.

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