the site of the Château de Hooge, a manor house which served as country house of the local landed gentry and residence of the lord of the manor. By July 1915 artillery had reduced the château to rubble and it was never rebuilt. After the war, much of the site was redeveloped as a theme park and is now occupied by the Bellewaerde, the oldest operating theme park in Belgium. Established in 1954 as a zoo and safari, the park expanded in the early 1980s and is now the most frequently visited amusement park in Flanders. On the site of the château's original stables, there is now a hotel and restaurant. World War I battlefield During World War I, the entire village was completely destroyed. Both sides exploded mines beneath the front line trenches there, the evidence of which are still visible today. Although the largest mine crater (created by a mine detonated at Hooge by the 175th Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers on 19 July 1915) has since been filled in, several other large mine craters that were created over the course of the fighting can still be seen. The most visible evidence remaining today is a large pond near the hotel and restaurant at the Bellewaerde theme park. The site is the result of Baron de Wynck, who landscaped three mine craters (blown by German units in June 1916 as part of their offensive against Canadian troops) into the existing pond near the hotel (image). There are many memorials and war cemeteries in and around Hooge. These include the Hooge Crater Cemetery, opposite which is now a museum, founded in 1994. A short distance away is the RE Grave, Railway Wood, which marks the spot where soldiers of the 177th Tunnelling Company were killed between November 1915 and August 1917 whilst tunnelling under the hill near Hooge during the defence of Ypres. One of the twelve men commemorated here is Second Lieutenant Charles Geoffrey Boothby (1894–1916), whose wartime letters to his girlfriend were published in 2005. Notes Ypres Populated places in West Flanders