Battlefield Visits

Sanctuary Wood

The Sanctuary Wood Museum Hill 62, 3 km (1.9 mi) east of Ypres, Belgium is located in the neighborhood of the Canadian Hill 62 Memorial and the Sanctuary Wood Cemetery. The museum is privately owned by Jacques Schier, the grandson of the farmer who founded the museum and owned the site of the museum since before World War I, and it has a unique collection of World War I items, including a rare collection of 3-dimensional photographs, weapons, uniforms, and bombs.

A reconstructed section of the British trench lines are located behind the museum, and the attraction also has a small bar, café and gift shop, in which many of the items cost one euro fifty.

The trenches feature a muddy maze of trenches.

As it has a wide collection of Great War artifacts, the museum is a popular attraction on World War I-themed school trips from the UK.

The trenches are very realistic and muddy. You can tell it is a British trench because of the iron around the walls of it where as German trenches would have been lined with sandbags. The museum trenches feature bends, hide outs and fire steps so that you can really experience how it would have felt to be in WW1. There is even an underground tunnel where the soldiers would have ran through to carry messages to one another. The tunnel is pitch black but there are no dead ends.


Play Pause Previous Slide Next Slide Random Slide

Slideshow image