Fort Napoleon

En un regard

Le château en bref

Fort Napoleon is a coastal fortification built among the dunes east of the port of Ostend, in West Flanders. Begun in July 1811 under the name Fort Impérial, it was meant to protect the town against a British landing that Napoleon greatly feared; the attack never came, and the fort served as a barracks and arsenal until it was abandoned in 1814. A fort of the "1811 model towers and redoubts" type, with a pentagonal plan, it features a central brick tower, a dry moat, a glacis, a covered way and five caponiers. After 1830 it came under Dutch administration (Fort Willem) and then Belgian (Fort Leopold), before finally taking the name of its builder. Occupied by the German army during the First World War, which left behind frescoes by Heinrich Otto Pieper, it housed a local history museum from 1932 to 1940, endured the Second World War, and gradually disappeared under the sand. Expropriated in 1995, it was restored and reopened as a museum managed by Herita.