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Origin and history

The Notre-Dame-de-l'Europe chapel was built between 1930 and 1934 in Fleury-devant-Douaumont, one of the nine Meusian villages declared "dead for France" after the First World War. These communes, located in the red zone of the battlefield of Verdun, were so destroyed that it was decided not to rebuild them. Despite this, they retained their administrative existence as a memorial, a unique case in France.

The nine commemorative chapels, financed by the titles of war damage, were erected to perpetuate the memory of the missing villages and their victims. Each chapel symbolizes one of these villages, and that of Fleury-devant-Douaumont, designed by architect Louis Berthemy, has been protected since 2021. It also includes the adjacent cemetery and its enclosure wall, bearing witness to the tragic history of the region.

The monument is part of a broader context of memorial reconstruction after 1918. The villages concerned, including Fleury-devant-Douaumont, were the scene of some of the most violent fighting in the Great War. Their physical disappearance, compensated by these religious buildings, recalls the extent of the destruction and the importance of preserving the collective memory of the sacrifices made.

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