Menin Gate traffic through the mausoleum that honours the Missing, who have no known graves. The patient lion on the top is the lion of Britain but also the lion of Flanders. It was chosen to be a memorial as it was the closest gate of the town to the fighting, and so Allied Troops would have marched past it on their way to fight. Actually, most troops passed out of the other gates of Ypres, as the Menin Gate was too dangerous due to shellfire. Its large "Hall of Memory" contains names on stone panels of 54,395 Commonwealth soldiers who died
Commonwealth War Graves Commission structures. Reginald Blomfield's Menin Gate was the first memorial to the missing located in Europe to be completed, and was unveiled on 24 July 1927. The Menin Gate (Menenpoort) was found to have insufficient space to contain all the names as originally planned and 34,984 names of the missing were instead inscribed on Herbert Baker's Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing. Other memorials followed: the Helles Memorial in Gallipoli designed by John James Burnet; the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme and the Arras Memorial designed by Edwin Lutyens; and the Basra Memorial in Iraq designed by Edward Prioleau Warren. The