Zone Rouge: An Area of France So Badly Damaged By WW1 That People Are Still Forbidden To Live There

Brilliant Maps

"While WW1 ended nearly a century ago, its scars can still be found across Northern France and Belgium. Zone Rouge (French for Red Zone) is perhaps the ultimate example of this.

"At the end of the war in 1918, the French government isolated the areas in red above and forbade activities such as forestry, farming and even the building of houses from being performed inside them.

"In total the non-contiguous areas took up 1,200 sq km (460 sq mi) (roughly the size of New York City).

"The primary reason the areas were declared no-go zones was that they had seen some of the worst fighting during the war, particularly during the Battle of Verdun in 1916. The areas were environmentally devastated and contained large numbers of unexploded ordnance along with human and animal remains that further contaminated the environment." . . .

. . . "A blog post really can’t do this topic much justice so I highly recommend learning more from the following books:

• The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
• Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War
• A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918
• Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914-1918
• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World