www.tourisme-verdun.com. Inescapably associated with the carnage of the First World War, Verdun sits beside the Meuse on a site first fortified by the ancient Gauls. Vauban had a hand in its defences, and by the turn of the century the town was ringed by 38 torts and earthworks During the initial stages of the First World War, the main battle arena was concentrated further north, but a German decision to outflank the French trenches required the storming of Verdun. The battle commenced on February 21, 1916, and continued until August 20, 1917. German High Command’s decision to end the deadlock on the Western Front and ‘bleed the French army to death’ had failed, at a cost of almost one million lives.

The actual town is lively and pleasant in the sunshine. A steep climb from the river in the old quarter, the Cathédrale de Notre-Dame has survived, as has the elegant 18thC bishop’s palace, its decorative carvings spruced up and roof urns newly gilded. Nearby, the Musée de la Princerie, www.musee-princerie-verdun.fr, houses its collections in some splendor. The antique confectioner’s utensils were used to make dragées, the town’s speciality sugared almonds.

However, most visitors are here to tour the battlefields, and come to Verdun to visit Vauban’s Citadelle Souterrain, rue du Ru, a 4-km tunnel complex where thousands of soldiers found shelter during the fighting, and which has been turned into a war museum. Also, Rodin’s powerful Monument de la Défense, on avenue Alsace-Lorraine (D903).

Verdun’s tourist office offers summer season guided tours and a good selection of French and foreign language guides to the battlefields (10 km N of town on the D913). The main stops are the forts of Douaumont and Vaux, and the Memorial de Verdun at Fleury (www.memorial-verdun.fr). Not to be missed, and impossible to forget, Fort de Douaumont commands the ridge, and should have been the strongest link in the defence system. Its hopelessly inadequate complement of French territorials was overrun by German troops within days, and the Germans then held the fort for eight agonizing months, some 3,000 soldiers crammed into the dank, ratinfested subterranean passages which drip with stalactites; the vents were blocked for fear of gas attacks. The French re-offensive of October 1916 was spearheaded by Moroccan troops, who were mercilessly sacrificed by General Magnin (later the hero of the hour). Their gravestones face Mecca amongst the field of crosses in the Cimetière Nationale where 15,000 men are buried. More sobering still is the Ossuaire de Douaumont, which contains the remains of 130,000 unknown soldiers, its vaults crammed with the names of the missing, and described by the president of the ossuary committee in 1932 as a ‘rampart against forgetfulness’.