The Menin Gate Lions

In 1936, two large stone guardian lions were donated to the Australian War Memorial by the mayor of Ypres. The lions, carved from limestone, were given to the Australian goverment as a gesture of friendship.

The lions had originally stood on plinths on either side of the Menin Gate at Ypres. This gate was one of only two entries into the medieval fortified city. It was through this gate that allied soldiers, including Australians, marched to the battlefields of the Ypres salient between 1914 and 1918. After the war, the Menin Gate was chosen as the site for a memorial to the thousands of allied soldiers who were killed in the area but had no known grave. The memorial consists of an imposing archway surmounted by a recumbent lion and it is inscribed with the names of 54,900 dead from Britain and Commonwealth countries. It was opened in 1927.

The lions had been toppled from their plinths by the shellfire which, during the course of the war, had reduced much of the city to rubble. Both lions were deeply chipped across their backs, and one had lost its right foreleg. The other had been badly damaged on one side of its head, and major damage elsewhere had reduced it to only a head and trunk ending just below the ribcage.

When the lions arrived at the Memorial in September 1936, the building was not yet complete and lacked a suitable space to display them properly, although the lion with the missing leg was displayed by itself for several years. It was decided in 1985 to reconstruct the missing pieces of each lion in such a way that it would be obvious what was original and what was reconstructed. The reconstructed portions were designed so that they could be dismantled to return the sculptures to their original state, should that prove necessary. The work was done by Kasimiers L. Zywuszko, a Polish-born sculptor, with the assistance of period photographs obtained from Ypres. It was completed in 1987.

Australia presented replicas of the famous Menin Gate Lions to the Belgian city of Ypres to mark the centenary of the Armistice that ended the war on November 11, 1918.

The new replica lions are on display on the plinths in front of the Menin Gate Memorial where every evening the residents of Ieper honour every Australian who served in the First World War by sounding the Last Post.