Zone rouge



The Zone rouge (French for "Red Zone") is the name given to about 1200 km2 of land in northeastern France that was physically and environmentally destroyed during the First World War. Because of hundreds of thousands of human and animal corpses and millions of unexploded ordnance that contaminated the land, some activities in the area such as housing, farming or forestry, were temporarily or permanently forbidden after the war by French law. Some towns were never permitted to be rebuilt.

Restrictions in the zone rouge still exist today although the controlled areas have been greatly reduced.