Dunkerque (German: Dunkirk, Dutch: Duinkerke) is a French port city on the southern North Sea coast or channel coast in the Département Nord in the historic West Flemish language area of French Flanders. The ten kilometers west of the border with Belgium and at the same time the northernmost city in France has 89,160 inhabitants (as of 1 January 2014), with the suburbs around 250,000. It lives from the harbor and large industrial settlements and houses a university with about 10,000 students.
Dunkerque gained historical importance in the time of King Louis XIV, its fortress builder Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban and the born in this city corsair Jean Bart. Meanwhile, the place name reminds one of the most important episodes of the Second World War: In 1940, the British Expeditionary Force (British Expeditionary Force, BEF) and parts of the defeated French army were encircled by the Germans in the Battle of Dunkirk.