Waterloo

Waterloo, like Stalingrad and Hiroshima, changed the course of history. The defeat of the French here in June 1815 ended Napoléon's attempt to dominate Europe.

The British army's top officers were at a swanky Brussels ball on the night of June 16, 1815, when they were called to face Napoléon's men. After joining their rank-and-file troops in Waterloo, they garrisoned Hougoumont farm, which still exists today, and spent the night of June 17 being lashed by heavy rain. Their allies, the Prussians, were camped in nearby Wavre.

At midday on June 18, the French soldiers, led by their cancer-stricken emperor, started their offensive at the farm. Heavy fighting raged all day and the bad weather that had soaked the British troops actually came to their defence, hindering the heavy French artillery and lessening the impact of cannonballs. The allies held their positions and eventually the French army were being attacked from all sides. In the early evening, Napoléon and his men retreated, escaping back to France. Later, he surrendered to the British and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The short, brutal clash, which made a hero of the British Duke of Wellington, took a gruesomely heavy toll on both sides, with 48,000 deaths.

What Victor Hugo once called the morne plain (dismal plain) is now a patch of open space in a prosperous suburb complete with large, whitewashed villas and smart boutiques. Home to two American schools for international children, Waterloo has a cosmopolitan feel. More than one-fifth of the population is foreign, including a large percentage of American, French, and Canadian expats.

The battle site itself is rather shabby, with souvenir shops, frites stands, and an abandoned go-cart track. But the regional government, inspired by the Gettysburg site in the United States, is pouring millions of euros into a plan to vastly improve the area.

A bypass is being constructed to pedestrianize the area, buildings are being restored to their 19th-century state, and there will be a proper parking lot, along with an access route lined with a memorial wall featuring the names of the regiments that fought in the battle. An underground exhibition space will be filled with scale models, 3-D films attempting to re-create the battlefield experience, and audioguides in 10 languages.