As the country's capital, Paris is home to many national war monuments, of which the Arc de Triomphe is perhaps the best-known. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the construction of a triumphal arch to celebrate his military victories, but the arch would not be finished until 1836. The huge arch includes commemorative sculptures and engravings and lists the names of 556 French generals alongside the names of the major battles of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1920 the arch's role as a war monument was enhanced when the body of an unknown soldier from World War I was buried underneath it. Since then, an eternal flame has burned over the soldier's grave.
The majority of war monuments in French towns and villages date from the period immediately after World War I. More than one million Frenchmen died during that war, and each local area collected money to erect "monuments aux morts," or "monuments to the dead," in their memory. According to author Daniel J. Sherman, these had many designs, but often included images of solders in uniform or the distinctive French "casque Adrian" helmet. The monument in Chateau-Thierry, in the Picardy area of northern France, for example, shows a fallen soldier lying on the battlefield, while the monument erected in Chabanais, in the southwest of the country, shows a woman mourning the dead, who are symbolically represented by the "casque" helmet. After World War II, the names of the local soldiers who had died were either added to these monuments, or a new monument erected. Many towns also erected monuments to honor members of the French Resistance.
Both World Wars I and II were partly fought in French territory and, as a result, thousands of soldiers from other countries died in France during those conflicts. Each of these countries created battlefield monuments and in many cases battlefield cemeteries to remember their dead. The largest British memorial in France is at Thiepval in the Somme area, and commemorates more than 70,000 British soldiers of World War I who have no known grave. American monuments are administered by the American Battlefield Monuments Commission, and include a large monument at Chateau-Thierry commemorating American actions in World War I, and the Utah Beach Monument, which remembers the actions of D-Day in 1944. Other countries with battlefield monuments in France include Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Portugal, South Africa, Germany and Italy.
