The memorial, designed by the architect Philippe Prost, is located on the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette hill next to the largest national military cemetery in France (where the fallen were buried in 1914-1918). However, the creators of the memorial, the opening of which is timed to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, decided not to make any distinction between the soldiers who died then in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region: this area, nicknamed by war correspondents "Northern Hell", then became the site of the hardest battles.
On the surface of the memorial, almost 600,000, or rather 579,606, names are engraved in alphabetical order, regardless of the rank, nationality or religion of those who once wore them. In addition to the British, French and Germans, these are Canadians, Australians, Moroccans, New Zealanders, immigrants from the Middle East, India … The list also contains the names of our compatriots - they were prisoners of war of the German army: together with the captured Romanians, the subjects of the Russian Empire account for 1,160 dead.
Philip Prost chose a universal ring shape for the memorial, symbolizing both eternity and brotherhood. Moreover, the idea of brotherhood and the desire for peace and reconciliation, as the creators of the monument emphasize, is not at all a demonstration of the patronizing attitude of modern Europeans to the conflict a century ago. Many participants in the First World War, even during the hostilities, felt a sense of kinship with the enemy soldiers who found themselves in the same unbearable conditions for endless months and years. Veterans have called for peace since the 1920s, although, as further developments have shown, these sentiments did not cover all the fighters.
The memorial, which Prost called "The Ring of Memory", has an elliptical plan, with one top facing the necropolis and the other towards the Plain of Artois, where three major battles took place during the war. It partially overhangs a depression in the relief, turning into a console: in these areas, its constituent panels of ultra-high-strength fiber-reinforced concrete are supported by 4 steel cables. In total, the ring with a perimeter of 328 m is made up of 128 panels weighing 7.5 - 10.2 tons. Its inside is covered with 500 sheets of gold-plated stainless steel; the names of the fallen are engraved on their surfaces in a specially designed font Le Lorette (in total they amounted to 10,500,000 characters, which is similar to 25,200-page books). The graphic designer of the memorial is Pierre di Sciullo.
Visitors enter the ring through a trench, which then turns into a tunnel. At the time of the opening of the memorial, its territory is a green lawn, which in the next four years, when commemorative events continue, will gradually turn into a blooming meadow. Landscape architect David Besson-Girard chose three flowers for him - symbols of the main nations that fought here: poppies (British), cornflowers (French) and white forget-me-nots (Germans).
