Ablain-Saint-Nazaire

Ablain-Saint-Nazaire is a French commune with 1824 inhabitants (as of 1 January 2018) in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France (formerly Nord-Pas-de-Calais) region. It is part of the Communauté d'agglomération de Lens-Liévin, which includes 36 communes. The Saint-Nazaire is a stream above the Deûle that crosses the village.

In the municipality lies the military cemetery "Notre-Dame-de-Lorette", where the fallen of the First World War - among others from the Battle of Loretto in 1915 - rest, 20,000 soldiers in individual graves and in ossuaries the remains of another 20,000 fallen. In the Muslim burial ground, 576 graves face Mecca. Covering 13 hectares, it is the largest French military cemetery from the First World War. In the center of the cemetery stands the 52-meter-high Mémorial de Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Also on the grounds is the Romanesque-Byzantine style Basilica of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, inaugurated in 1925. In 2014, the circular International Memorial to the Fallen was opened, with nearly 580,000 names of the fallen engraved on it.

Another memorial is the former church from the 16th century, which was destroyed in 1915 like the whole village. Unlike the houses of the inhabitants, the church was not rebuilt, but as a ruin is a memorial to the horrors of war.

Population

The population fluctuated during the 19th century with a slight increase in population. After rising sharply after the turn of the century in 1900 until World War I, the population dropped by over 20% by 1921. Since then, the population has steadily increased to its current level.