OUR LADY OF LORETTE: A WAR MEMORIAL TO BUILD FRATERNITY
‘The Ring of Memory’ memorial in northern France was designed to focus attention not on nations but on the individuals who lost their lives in World War One.
Euronews correspondent Laurence Alexandrowicz met its creator, Architect Philippe Prost:
“The shape of a ring came to me quite easily, to express an idea, of giving the concept of fellowship a shape. I thought about those people who form human chains, or about children who dance around in rings in the school playground.
In other words it is a way of being all together, hand in hand, and of rebuilding ourselves within this fellowship, giving it a unity and a feeling of eternity.”
“ 579, 606 names, it is huge and I think that each one of us, somewhere, has a grandfather, or knows someone or someone who is somehow famous and whose name is written on the memorial. It is something quite exceptional, moving.
There are 500 metal panels and around 1 200 names engraved on each metal panel.
One page of the book remains blank because in 2018 if unknown soldiers are identified, if we discover their names, we will still be able to engrave their names onto the last, the 500th panel.”
Architect Philippe Prost was talking to euronews correspondent Laurence Alexandrowicz at the memorial site in Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
Copyright © 2014 euronews
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