News & Updates
Tyne Cot visitor numbers grow
Published on June 13th 2008The number of people visiting the Tyne Cot War Graves Cemetery last year has been estimated at 265,000, some 45,000 more than the previous year.
The figures, released by the Province of West Flanders tourism service, also show that an estimated 328,000 people in total visited the World War One area of Flanders in direct connection with the war rather than for other reasons.
The rise in numbers could be explained in part by the 90th Commemorations of the Battles of Messines and Passchendaele. July was the major month for visitors and was when HM Queen Elizabeth and HRH Queen Paola of the Belgians attended a Commemorative service and opened the new Visitors' Centre at Tyne Cot, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's largest such cemetery in the world.
The Memorial Museum Passchendaele also saw a rise of more than 30% in the numbers of visitors coming through its doors. In April this year the public voted it the best museum in Flanders as part of the annual Belgian museum awards and a few weeks later the Regional Government of Flanders added the museum to its list of government-recognised institutions.
There are 11,954 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated at Tyne Cot Cemetery with 8,367 of the burials unidentified. Of those 520 are New Zealanders, 322 of them unidentified. The Tyne Cot Memorial, in effect an extension of the Menin Gate, commemorates a further 35,000 servicemen, including 1,166 New Zealanders, who died in the Ypres Salient after August 16, 1917, and whose graves are not known.