As a third and last one in my current Belgian Architecture blog-series, we visit today the, largest Commonwealth Cemetery of World War I and II.
About 9 kilometers north east of Ieper (Ypres), just outside the small village of Passendale, we find the Tyne Cot cemetery. A resting place of nearly 12000 British, Australian, Canadian, New-Zealand, South-African and French, World War I soldiers and strangely enough also 4 German soldiers.
Historians do not really agree about the origin of the name "Tyne Cot". The most probably one seems to be that on the site of the present cemetery, a cottage used to stand. The British soldiers abbreviated the word cottage to 'Cot' and coupled it with the name of the river Tyne in Northern-England. 
In the Ypres area there are numerous war cemeteries from different nations, a large part being British. This is not only the largest one, it is also the most impressive one. 
One doesn't immediately think about Architecture when visiting a cemetery, but the layout is very well thought off and surely worth a look at if you are in the neighborhood. A new modern visitors center was opened by Queen Elisabeth on July 12th 2007.
Happy shooting,
Bjorn
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Bjorn