Around the limestone cliff of Cerny-en-Laonnois

This chapel, inaugurated in Cerny-en-Laonnois in 1951, is home to a number of commemorative plaques erected here by regiments and individuals alike, including one dedicated to the theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (bearing the following dedication: ‘On this land of the Chemin des Dames in 1917 / His thoughts on the future of humanity took shape’), and one donated by the President of the Republic of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor, in 1983 in memory of his compatriots who fought on the front...

Two necropolises set up side by side in the aftermath of the First World War: one French with 5,204 servicemen and the other German with 7,526 soldiers. Both were restored in 1972...

The village was almost entirely razed to the ground during the fighting in the First World War, and was rebuilt on higher ground, with only the cemetery remaining in its original location. As you walk around it, you will see the foundations of the church, which has been attested to since the 11th century and which, according to some, was built on the site of the Gallo-Roman villa belonging to the parents of the future Saint Rémi, the man who baptised Clovis...

Born on 29 March 1891, Pierre Charles Caubert of the 64th Infantry Regiment fell on this spot on 8 May 1917; this monument was erected in his memory on the heights of the Chemin...

The destruction suffered by the commune of Cerny in the spring of 1917 is well known, but what happened there three years earlier is less well known... This British monument to the memory of the battalion that fought there against German troops in the autumn of 1914 bears witness to this. It was here that the first trenches of the Chemin des Dames were dug during the fighting that cost the lives of many of them - more than 13,000 men - some of whom are buried in the nearby Vendresse-Beaulne military cemetery.