The In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, a cultural and transnational museum about WWI

The Ypres salient, the infamous bulge in the frontline around the Belgian city of Ypres was one of the major battlefields on the Western Front. Over 220,000 British and Commonwealth lives were lost there between 1914 and 1918. Cemeteries, monuments and the Menin Gate, the very first Missing Memorial ever built, are the main reasons why British people have visited and still continue to visit Ypres and the former West Flemish front zone.  At the Menin Gate a daily Last Post is sounded in honour of the fallen. In this landscape of traditional and mostly national commemoration, the In Flanders Fields Museum stands out as a place of a more inclusive, transnational and also cultural commemoration. Piet Chielens, co-founder of the museum that opened its doors in 1998, depicts the need of such an agonistic perspective to secure the commemoration and the historic relevance of WWI for future generations.