Arras was almost totally destroyed during WW1 being on the frontline. Rather astonishingly it was more or less completely rebuilt as it had been before the war - you wouldn't know it had been ruined. What a terrible thing for the town's population though - most had been evacuated but to come back to a shell of a town.
Postcard shows the Hotel de Ville before the war and then after. And then my picture of it today. Amazing. Don't suppose all those Syrian towns will get the same treatment once the 'war' is over if it ever is.
