Poperinge

Poperinge is a city and municipality in the Belgian province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region, about 13 kilometres west of Ypres. It is known as the hops city, since the surrounding region grows about 80 percent of Belgian hop production, and it holds the national hop museum and a triennial hop festival and parade each September. Besides the town centre the municipality takes in the submunicipalities of Krombeke, Proven, Reningelst, Roesbrugge-Haringe and Watou. Archaeological finds show local habitation since the Neolithic period, the Franks knew the place as Pupurningahem, and in 1147 Dietrich of Alsace, Count of Flanders, granted the town a charter, after which it thrived as a cloth-making centre. It was burned in 1382, 1436 and again in the sixteenth century, and passed between French, Spanish and Austrian rule before Belgian independence in 1830. During the First World War it was one of only two Belgian towns not occupied by Germany and served as a billeting and hospital base behind the Ypres front, with Talbot House as a famous rest house for soldiers. The railway station is the terminus of line 69.