Explore Arras

The Town Hall and Belfry of Arras stand at the north-west end of the Place des Héros. The Flamboyant Gothic belfry, 75 metres high, was finished in 1554 and is crowned by the city's lion. Both were destroyed by German shelling in 1914 and rebuilt to the old design. A lift and about forty steps lead to a level below the clock; the belfry is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Arras Cathedral is the former abbey church of Saint-Vaast, a classical building designed by Pierre Contant d'Ivry, begun in the 18th century and completed in the 1830s. It replaced the Gothic cathedral demolished after the Revolution and became the cathedral in 1804. Shelled in 1917 and rebuilt afterwards, it stands above a broad flight of steps beside the Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Wellington Quarry is a First World War memorial 20 metres beneath Arras, in medieval chalk quarries that New Zealand tunnellers linked from November 1916 into a network able to shelter 24,000 soldiers before the Battle of Arras of 9 April 1917. Opened in 2008, it is seen on a guided tour; a lift leads down to tunnels marked with soldiers' graffiti.

The Arras Memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens with sculpture by Sir William Reid Dick, records the names of about 35,000 soldiers of the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died around Arras between 1916 and August 1918 with no known grave. It stands in the Faubourg d'Amiens British Cemetery beside the Arras Flying Services Memorial, both unveiled in 1932.