The primary visitor destinations are the fort (actually known as Fort Douaumont) and the Douamont Ossuary. The Verdun Battlefield spreads out to the northeast of the city of Verdun, approximately 160 miles east of Paris.

Also on site is the Doaumont Ossuary, where the unidentified skeletal remains of over 100,000 soldiers are stored. However, extensive sections of VerdunвЂ™s underground fortifications can still be visited, from trenches to bunkers to a labyrinth of communication tunnels. Virtually the entire site was laid waste during the latter, and most traces of the old citadel on the surface are long gone.

It was fought over many times, including during the Napoleanic Wars, Franco-Prussian War and World War I. The Verdun Fortress can be traced back to the reign of Charlemagne, and perhaps even earlier. In the end little changed from a strategic standpoint, and Verdun remained a thorn in the side of the Germans for the rest of the war. The casualties on each side were staggering: an estimated half a million French and four hundred thousands Germans by the time the battle was over, with seven hundred thousand total killed in action. Throughout the rest of the year, much of the French efforts, led by Marshal Petain, were spent in trying to retake this key position, which was eventually retaken in October at great cost.Д«y the time the German campaign was called off, it had lasted ten months, and in the end failed to achieve its objective. Their greatest success was the capture of Douamont, one of the largest and strongest of the French defensive positions. After some initial German advances, the battle stagnated by March. Well over a million soldiers fought on each side of the battle. The campaign began on February 21, 1916, and was one of the largest single military engagements in history. Surrounded by a ring of immense, heavily armed fortresses, this French bastion jutted deep into German territory, and blocked one of the main routes towards Paris. This time their target was the city of Verdun. All attempts at breaking through by either side had failed, but that didnвЂ™t stop the Germans from trying again. This didnвЂ™t stop the regionвЂ™s residents from attempting to build them, and one of the greatest, was the massively fortified French city of Verdun.Д«y early 1916, World War I had already been raging for well over a year, and the Western Front had settled into a stalemate of trench warfare. The wars became ever more terrible with the advent of gunpowder weapons, which increasingly made fixed fortifications obsolete. The region between Germany, France and the Low Countries has been one of the worldвЂ™s bloodiest frontiers since earliest times, and as a result has historically been one of the most heavily fortified. The restored fortresses of Verdun, which were all-but flattened by artillery shelling during the battle, are among the most popular World War I military sites anywhere. The successful defense of Verdun, despite the casualties, was attributed to Henri Petain, who later went on to serve as marshal of the French armed forces. One of the largest offensives launched by the Central Powers on the Western Front, it involved over two million soldiers, cost nearly a million casualties, and resulted in no strategic change of significance in the trench warfare stalemate which had bedeviled both sides since the outset of the war. The Battle of Verdun was actually a campaign that lasted nearly a year and was one of the bloodiest engagements of World War I.

Verdun battlefield