In 1938, war veterans felt that King Albert I deserved a place on the banks of the Yser in Nieuwpoort. A symbolic place because it was here at the Ganzepoot sluice complex that the course of World War I was determined. By opening the sluices and flooding the polders, the Germans had to halt their advance. The beginning of the trench warfare. Julien de Ridder’s design is 25 metres high, circular and 30 metres in diameter. You can walk all the way around the top, where there is a fine view of the Yser, the sluices and the sea. Below the monument, the Westfront visitors’ centre tells the whole story. About the heroics and misery of war, but mostly about how the power of water stopped the German war machine.
