WW1 Battlefield tours from Reims in September, 2025

I don't know of any tours from Reims to surrounding WW1 sites. Will you have a car?

The Tourist Office could not provide you any maps showing WW1 cemeteries or sites in the area around Reims. Reims was in the thick of the fighting in WW1, especially in 1918 when the Germans mounted their last strategic offensive towards the Marne.

My focus in seeing these WW1 sites ,ie cemeteries, memorials, monuments, etc are those of the French and the Germans. I have not yet looked up those in Reims.

In and around Reims are numerous French and German sites. The Tourist Office was of little help....strange.

So far I've yet to encounter that when asking about WW1 French and German cemeteries or on Napoleon...all very helpful. Maybe asking your hotel might help in getting more information. My small hotel in Metz has a brochure table where WW1 brochures are also included.

I am very interested in knowledgable responses! I'm researching similar opportunities.

NO personal experience, but I have found Tucker Tours out of Sedan (close-ish to Reims) for WWI and Maginot line tours.

I hope we find some knowledgable posters out there with some experience!

akbaron,
Don't know about organized tours, but I hope whatever you find will include Verdun. I've been three times, husband five times. The aura of the battlefields, overgrown through the decades, is spiritual. And the museum there and the Duonmont Ossuary are well worth a visit, if time allows.

I know a little about the WWI battlefields and Reims, but I've never done a tour from Reims. What I use for Reims specifically is my Michelin Guide from 1919 for Rheims. You should be able to find reprints, and it's really good because you can see what the place looked like right after the war vs. now.

Maarten Otte also has a really good series of books on the Battlefields, specifically the Meuse-Argonne, with self driving tours to places not on the normal routes. Highly recommended.

The main places are quite easy to find if you look on the American Battlefield Monuments website. https://www.abmc.gov/

Just outside the American cemeteries you can often find German ones (like at Belleau Wood). The French also have a couple big, open, cemeteries, but I've found mostly they took their people home and buried them locally. (This makes sense as that's their country.) Just about every little town has a graveyard with WWI dated stones, and usually a monument for either the Franco Prussian War or WWI, or often combined.

If you drive around the battlefields you can run into places with German cemeteries, but they're not well marked, and only recently have the French allowed the Germans to do any maintenance and upkeep. Unlike the white marble markers in the American places, the German ones mostly use black painted metal plaques or crosses, usually with a much larger unit memorial amongst them.

What you have to understand is that many of the places they fought over have been rebuilt, and the expanding cities have overrun the old battlefields in many places. It's the smaller, more rural, areas that still have traces, and you really want a car to get to those. This is not just a Reims issue, Nancy, Metz, Lille, etc. they all have very little other than museums.

“The” battlefields is a big misnomer. Areas of conflict aren’t marked off and fenced in….you have to search. The western front in World War I stretched from the Channel to the Swiss Border. The war was violent but often static. Battlefield touring can be rewarding but not always easy.

The answer I have is to look at MAJOR & MRS HOLT’S GUIDE TO THE WESTERN FRONT (South) available from Amazon. You get a good overview of the battle lines, recommended stops and tour recommendations. I have a personal interest in the Meuse Argonne as my grandfather fought there and thus have travelled heavily east of Reims and northwest of Verdun.

The other responses here reflect accurately that time has passed and there’s simply not a lot to see. Pamphlets at tourist offices are not really good research…..you’ll have to dig a little but there may be opportunities. Good Luck!

I am planning a trip that will start in Bavaria and finish in France, sans Paris. I am looking at the tours offered by this company for WWI sites:

https://royaljourneyfrance.com/historical-tours/

I've looked at a number of the "tours" available; don't waste your money. You can easily see everything they promise with just a little research and planning. The only really good guided "tour" of the area I've been a part of was a 6 day military "staff ride" of the St Mihiel pocket and that was actually very comprehensive in that we spent a huge amount of that time walking where there were no monuments (or very overlooked ones). Imagine standing in a freshly plowed field and then walking 2-3 km from one line of departure to where an assault took place, with just a topo map. Only to find there's nothing left but a small plinth on one end of the route.

The French have nicely preserved a huge number of vital spots that can be seen, but the "battlefield" is a continuous line that in 1917 stretched for hundreds of miles and was, occasionally, miles deep. For example, if you go to the very pretty small town of Varennes-en-Argonne, and visit the Monument aux Morts Americain de Pennsylvanie, and stand looking out over the valley on a clear day, you're looking at the battlefield as far as you can see; an area that took about 45 days for the American troops to get across at a cost of over 25,000 dead. It is one of the better places to visit.

So, if you only have one or two days, here's my list of places to go to, no need for a guide. (This is basically where American troops were involved and east of Riems, the British were over towards Lille, and Chateau Thierry and the Belleau Woods where the US Marines were used is north of Paris.)

Varennes-en-Argonne - for the above mentioned monument, a small museum, and the Crown Price's bunker.
Douaumont - If you want one place to really see the battle, go here. You have the remains of the fort, the ossuary, the Froideterre fort ruins, Fort de Vaux, Fort de Souville, and the Verdun Memorial (which is the best of the museums, with displays in French, German, and English) all in an area of a couple miles. You can easily spend a day just here.
The Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery
Cheppy German Military Cemetery
Montfaucon - the American Memorial that stands where there once used to be a town. Just the ruins remain.
Vauquois Hill - where you can walk both the French and German trenches (they are only 10 feet apart) and see the remains of the craters from the huge mines.
Butte de montsec - not the largest American monument, but to my mind one of the most beautiful, with a great view across the battlefield.
St. Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial
Souilly - a very small town, but the town hall served as General Pershing's HQ and is now a museum. There's another small private museum just around the corner, more of a collection of stuff found on the battlefield, but interesting.

Hi,

I'll be in Reims this summer and hopefully my luck dealing with the Tourist Office will be more productive than what you encountered.

There are German and French cemeteries around Reims, how far I am don't know but it's worth trying to get out to the site by taxi if arranged by the Tourist Office. That's what I did in Albert/Somme to get to Fricourt.

The young lady in the Albert Tourist Office took care of the details, I only had to pay the taxi driver for r/t to Fricourt, ie a pre-arranged price. Maybe the same option might be available from Reims.