Rising 63m high, this automated, first order port lighthouse is the highest of its kind in France (its beam can be seen from 60km away). The lighthouse dates from 1843; you can climb 276 steps to its outdoor platform for views over the port, town and, when visibility is good, the English coast.
Phare de Risban
Dunkirk
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Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
26.53 MILES
No museum gives a more balanced yet moving and user-friendly introduction to WWI history. It’s a multisensory experience combining soundscapes, videos,…
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20.57 MILES
This is an unusually light-hearted WWI attraction. Reverend Philip ‘Tubby’ Clayton set up the Everyman’s Club here in 1915 to offer rest and recreation…
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29.73 MILES
Probably the most-visited Salient site, this is the world’s biggest British Commonwealth war cemetery, with 11,956 graves. A huge semicircular wall…
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27.24 MILES
Ostend’s most striking historical building features beautifully ornate twin spires, a rose window and a gloomy neo-Gothic interior. It was consecrated on…
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Langemark Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof
25.7 MILES
The Salient's largest German WWI cemetery is smaller than Tyne Cot but arguably more memorable, amid oak trees and trios of squat, mossy crosses. Some 44…
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21.26 MILES
The unusual 1950 IJzertoren is built of drab purple-brown brick and topped with power-station-style windows. This colossal 84m-high ‘peace’ tower is at…
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26.72 MILES
Every night at 8pm, traffic through the Menin Gate is halted while buglers sound the Last Post in remembrance of the WWI dead, a moving tradition started…
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28.04 MILES
The impenetrable, pentagon-shaped Fort Napoleon is an unusually intact fortress dating from 1812, though there’s comparatively little to see inside. The…
Nearby Dunkirk attractions
0.76 MILES
To learn about the 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk, stop by this non-profit museum. In addition to a 15-minute film, there are scale models, and evocative…
0.83 MILES
Set inside a 19th-century tobacco warehouse, this museum will delight fans of maritime history and, especially, model ships. During school holidays you…
1.05 MILES
Dunkirk's landmark 58m-high belfry – the bell tower of the original Église St-Éloi before it burnt to the ground in 1558 – was erected in 1440 and has…
1.06 MILES
Constructed in 1560, the Église St-Éloi was refaced with a neo-Gothic façade completed in 1889. It's dubbed la cathédrale des sables (cathedral of the…
1.7 MILES
Honouring over 4500 British and Commonwealth soldiers ‘with no known grave’, this memorial is next to the British War Graves Section of Dunkirk's town…
10.47 MILES
This cute popular theme park is based around Belgian TV character Plop the gnome and his friends. It's a kid-pleasing world of rides, roller coasters and…
11.38 MILES
This superb museum occupies the house and studio of Paul Delvaux (1897–1994), one of Belgium's most famous surrealist artists. What appears to be a…
12.89 MILES
Around 8km south of Veurne, the late-16th-century Kasteel Beauvoorde is an intact, picture-perfect (though tiny by castle standards), four-storey moated…