Description : Nieuwpoort (West Flemish: Nieuwpôort; French: Nieuport) is a municipality located in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of West Flanders. It obtained city rights in 1163 from Count Philip of Flanders. The Battle of Nieuwpoort, between the Dutch and the Spanish, happened here in 1600. The city was a Dunkirker base. Painter Victor Boucquet made two of the altar-pieces for the great church in the 17th century. The city was occupied by French forces for six years between 1757 and 1763, as part of the conditions of the Second Treaty of Versailles between France and Austria. A large waterworks infrastructure project called the Ganzepoot (goose foot, in Dutch) was constructed in Nieuwpoort in the 19th century to drain the polders and channel water in and around the town and to the North Sea. During the Battle of the Yser, part of the First Battle of Ypres in World War I, Hendrik Geeraert opened the sluice gates on the mouth of the river Yser twice to flood the lower lying land, thus halting the German advance. Two World War I monuments, the Nieuport Memorial and King Albert I Memorial, are in close proximity of the Ganzepoot.
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