Did you ever visit any place where a particular battle took place?

[twgamer20197]

From whatever period in history

[Cyclops]

I went to Belgium and stayed with a lovely Aussie expat. We went to Ypres, very sad and a moving metaphor for much of history in that the town was restored after near total destruction to a semblance of its former self, and the rebuilt belfry is now considered a world heritage site.

We also went to Waterloo. Much of the site was excavated (to build a vainglorious monument to the King of the Netherlands lol) and so the topography of the Allied right was altered. I was struck by how flat the whole battlefield was. I had expected a soaring ridge with a difficult slope but its more swells and rises than slopes and inclines. Obviously a rise of a few metres is enough to create a ridge behind which infantry can shelter from direct fire, but my mental picture shattered on arrival and I had to reconstruct the battle i my mind as I walked along.

The slopes, gentle as they were, still represented significant physical and moral obstacles for the attacking French and benefits for the Allies. One quality of generalship in the horse and musket era is an eye for terrain: this certainly was rammed home for me at Waterloo. Napoleon was renowned for his ability to read a field and see its opportunities, but at Waterloo it was Wellington who read it best and extracted every possible advantage for his army.

I visited Dublin in 1989 and 1997. In the 1980's it was still a permanently depressed backwater with stretches of abandoned houses and the odd bomb site (figurative or real I am not sure). It was a battlefield of sorts in 1916, but of course in the history of any place skirmishes, battles, and massacres must have taken place in every conceivable location. By 1997 ot was a party town and it was all glossed over, aside from some heritage listed bullet holes at the Post Office.

I also visited Rome and Istanbul: at the Theodosian walls I reflected on the many battles waged before those colossal bulwarks, and at the Capitoline I recalled the sack of that city by the Senones: how close to destruction must Rome have seemed that day.

[Ἀπολλόδοτος Α΄ ὁ Σωτήρ]

I've visited many Greek battle sites... As well as some others in Balkans and Anatolia.

[Common Soldier]

Ai have only visited American Revolutionary and Civil War battle sites, Gettysburg, Bunker Hill, Lexington and Concord, etc. Gettysburg was pretty much still countryside, but the Battle of Bunker Hill site was pretty much built up and different from when the Battle was fought. Never knew that when the Battle was fought. The land was a peninsula surrounded by water. Today, rhr water is comes and the memorial site is surrounded by neighborhoods not water. Ñ

[Morifea]

@Common Soldier: Thats a pity about Bunker Hill.

Nearly everyday I have to drive through the Area, where Napoleon gave the Bavarians a bloody nose during the Battle of Hanau in 1813. Its mostly industrial area now, a highway and some swampy forest.

[sumskilz]

Most mornings I find myself waking up suspended eleven floors above the site of the Battle of Jaffa (1917). Which remarkably, isn't in Jaffa.

[Cyclops]

Most mornings I find myself waking up suspended eleven floors above the site of the Battle of Jaffa (1917). Which remarkably, isn't in Jaffa.

The battle may have been named for the iconic Australian lolly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffas. They were invented 13 years after the war finished, but great events cast long shadows.

Piff a handful of those into the Ottoman positions and the Light Horse would have been through them like a dose of salts. And don't pretend the New Zealanders were in the lead, they were busy fabricating false claims about Pavlova and Phar Lap.

[Cookiegod]

When I still lived at that place where I grew up (and every time I visit my family) I have a center view on battlefield that had one of the greatest French generals fight one of the great generals of the Holy Roman Emperor. However, no one really won this battle, so people kinda forgot about it.

The city I live in now had multiple sieges, so I'm on a battlefield every day.

[Muizer]

I live in Europe, so the odds are I've been on the site of dozens, possibly even hundreds of battle site without knowing it or paying much attention to it. In my home province I can name 3 off the top of my head: Haarlem and Alkmaar (besieged during the 80 years war) and the site(s) of the (failed) Anglo-Russian invasion of 1799. There have been more battles, but they're quite obscure (between the counts of Holland and the Frisians e.g.). And that's in a comparatively quiet corner of Europe.

[Ἀπολλόδοτος Α΄ ὁ Σωτήρ]

The battle may have been named for the iconic Australian lolly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffas. They were invented 13 years after the war finished, but great events cast long shadows.

Piff a handful of those into the Ottoman positions and the Light Horse would have been through them like a dose of salts. And don't pretend the New Zealanders were in the lead, they were busy fabricating false claims about Pavlova and Phar Lap.

I guess you're joking about Jaffas... Nevertheless battles tend to be named after nearest major locale known to participants and that would be Jaffa in this case. Tel Aviv at that time was a small place, or more precisely the mouth of the Yarkon River. Those weren't familiar toponyms to the British and to an extent the Turks as well. Tel Aviv eventually outgrew Jaffa, hence the official name of Tel Aviv-Yafo.