Dunkirk

About Dunkirk

Dunkirk is a northern French port used occasionally for British Isles and North Sea cruises, best known for the WWII Allied evacuation of 1940. Ships dock at the Quai des Flandres, 10 minutes from the town center. The Dunkirk 1940 Museum and the LAAC contemporary art center headline the town itself. Day excursions run to Bruges, Belgium, about 90 minutes east by motorcoach.

• Dunkirk (French: Dunkerque) has the third-largest harbour in France and sits just 10 km from the Belgian border on the North Sea coast.
• The city's name comes from West Flemish meaning 'church in the dunes' — the area was historically Flemish-speaking, and French Flemish was still commonly spoken in the city until the mid-20th century.
• The Battle of Dunkirk in May-June 1940 — Operation Dynamo — saw the dramatic evacuation of over 338,000 Allied soldiers using a fleet of military vessels and 'little ships' of civilian craft, immortalized in Christopher Nolan's 2017 film.
• Count Baldwin III had town walls erected around Dunkirk around AD 960 to protect the fishing settlement from Viking raids.
• Dunkirk is today one of France's most industrialized ports, handling steel, petrochemicals, and container traffic, and hosts the largest integrated steel complex in France at the nearby ArcelorMittal plant.