Lakenhallen Ypres

Assignment:
Feel the building and guess what it is.

After this assignment, you can go inside the building itself where you can visit the Flanders Fields Museum.
(The price to visit this museum is:
Adults € 9
Children under 7 years: free
From 8 to 19 years: € 4
19 to 25 years: € 5)

Additional related poem:
the poem by John McCrae

In Flanders fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Major John McCrae – 1915

Boezinge

info:
The Cloth Hall in Ypres is one of Europe's largest civic buildings in Gothic style. The original cloth hall was built between 1230 and 1304 and was one of the earliest large buildings north of the Alps. The belfry is 70 m high and was built between 1200 and 1230 as a symbol of the power of the bourgeoisie. From the late 12th century until 1817, actual living cats were thrown out of the belfry. Since 1955, these have been plush cats.

Fire of the Cloth Halls on November 22, 1914.
The building was completely destroyed during World War I and later rebuilt. The restored cloth hall was completed in 1967. The architects, including J. Coomans, opted for a faithful reconstruction of the pre-war state. At the bottom of the cloth halls, the original stones are still visible, these are the largest. The higher you go, the smaller the stones become.

The cloth halls were previously used as a trading place for cloth. In every doorway at the bottom of the belfry, the cloth was sold. Ypres was very famous in the Middle Ages for the good quality of the cloth.

Today, the Cloth Hall is a UNESCO-protected monument as part of the joint listing of a group of belfries in Belgium and France.

In the belfry tower (70m) there is a carillon with 49 bells with a total weight of 11,892 kg. Every quarter of an hour, an automatic tune plays: "The Ieper Garden Day Song". A short version plays a quarter to and a quarter past the hour, a longer version at half past, and at the hour itself, the full song plays.

The In Flanders Fields Museum is also located in the halls.

Mien Verstraete