The memorial is built of reinforced concrete faced with Euville stone and red brick. The single span Hall of Memory (36.5 metres long and 20 metres wide) is covered in by a coffered half-elliptical arch. At both ends of the Hall of Memory there is an archway (9 metres wide and 14.5 metres high). There are two flat arches on either side of it (3.5 metres wide and nearly 7 metres high). Each of the flat arches is flanked on either side by an engaged Doric column and surmounted by an entablature. On the east side, over each of the two central arches, there is a large panel for the dedicatory inscription (by Rudyard Kipling):

TO THE ARMIES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE WHO STOOD HERE FROM 1914 TO 1918 AND TO THOSE OF THEIR DEAD WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE

Above the panel on the east side, looking away from the city and facing the Ypres Salient battlefields, there is a lion lying down. This feature was included to mark the fact that the Meenenpoorte (Menen Gate) at the start of the war in 1914 was guarded by two stone lions.

Above the panel on the west side, facing the town, there is a sarcophagus with a flag and a wreath.

Loggias run along the length of the north and south sides of the building on the ramparts. In the centre of both the north and the south sides of the Menin Gate a broad staircase leads from the Hall of Memory up to the ramparts and the loggias.

The inscription over the entrance to the northern staircase is:

THEY SHALL RECEIVE A CROWN OF GLORY THAT FADETH NOT AWAY

The inscription over the entrance to the southern staircase is:

IN MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM

HERE ARE RECORDED NAMES

OF OFFICERS AND MEN WHO FELL

IN YPRES SALIENT BUT TO WHOM

THE FORTUNE OF WAR DENIED

THE KNOWN AND HONOURED BURIAL

GIVEN TO THEIR COMRADES IN DEATH

The Menin Gate was so named because here the road out of Ypres passed through the old wall defences going in the direction of Menin. During the war the two stone lions standing on each side of the Menin Gate were seen by tens of thousands of troops as they went towards the front line. The gate, beyond which these men’s fate lay, became highly symbolic. Afterwards it was decided that on this site a huge monument would commemorate those of the Empire who were killed in Belgium but have no known grave. Although it bears the names of 55,000 soldiers including 6,000 Australians, so great were the casualties that not all the names of 'the missing' are here. Every evening the Last Post is sounded under the memorial’s great arch.

Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

Constructed by the British Government.

Maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Last Post Association.

Meensestraat, Ieper, Belgium.

The Menin Gate Memorial is at the eastern exit of the town of Ieper in Flanders, Belgium. The best view of the Menin Gate is from the road – the N8, the Menin Road – leading into Ypres which passes through the memorial and on down the Meensestraat and into the Grote Markt.