The Maginot Line

The Maginot Line in Moselle

A land of passage, Moselle has long been torn between Germanic and French cultures. In the early 1930s, to guard against a new attack coming once more from the east, France built the largest line of fortifications in the world after the Great Wall of China. Stretching for more than 1,500 kilometres, it is in Moselle that it is at its densest and most interesting. It is possible to discover it tower by tower: Hackenberg fort, the largest ever built in which visitors travel by Underground Railway, the Fort aux Fresques in Hestroff, where painter-soldiers were allowed to express their artistic talents, the Simserhof fort, which allows you to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the Phoney War in its original museum, a number of fortifications and bunkers that resisted honourably in June 1940 during the Battle of France, the floodplain known as the aquatic Maginot Line.