Three quarters of a century ago, Dunkirk was centre stage in the theatre of war.

The city is again playing out the story but in a very different way.

This time the theatre will be a cinema and the participants are all actors.

Dunkirk has been turned into a movie set.

It is home to filming for the next few weeks for a new film by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception) on Operation Dynamo – the evacuations of the 330,000 British and Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940.

It is easy to understand why the city has been chosen to host the filming and it is something the film’s producers said they had always intended when they had the idea.

Nolan first visited the town around three or four years ago for a reccy but planning has been firmly in the pipeline for more than a year.

Filming for the movie titled Dunkirk, which is coming out of the Warner Bros studio, began at the end of May in the very week 76 years after the evacuations took place and the full scale retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from mainland Europe.

It really is astonishing at the transformation from a typical French port town with its sweeping promenade stretching round to the Belgian border for more than 5km to a film set which takes you back to the 1940s.

Cafes, bars and restaurants on the promenade which are usually full of people enjoying a beer, coffee or an ice cream have been turned into a high street of 1940s urban France.

Then take the rows of old French military vehicles parked outside and the transformation is complete.

Walk down a couple more streets and the closed film set with its sandbag walls, sentry posts, cars and motorcycles and all of a sudden the scene becomes very real and you forget it’s really 2016.

Dunkirk remained the last bastion of Nazi occupation in France – finally being forced into surrender on May 9, 1945 once the Allies had finally broken deep into Germany and were banging on the door of the Reichstag in Berlin.

And no part of this corner of north east France was untouched by the Germans in the Second World War.

That much is evident walking around the town with a mixture of architecture ranging from the oldest medieval to the modern 1950s and 1960s rebuilds right up to the present day.

Some of the most poignant reminders are not the masses of rebuilt houses and shops but the older houses still battered by bullet holes – some the size of cricket balls.

The decision not to rebuild or repair these buildings depict as strong a message of what it might have been like in the close quarters of the streets than daresay the rows of headstones in the military cemeteries around the city.

The reality strikes at the cemeteries of course.

Sobering sight

But the really moving places are the actual sites where tragedies occurred and lives were lost and the full atrocity of war happened right before your eyes.

There are two places where this really resonates.

As with so many of these types of memorials the mood is captured perfectly. The wind rustling through the trees today brings the air of peace afforded to these men following the atrocities

The first is a small cowshed at a place called La Plaine au Bois just outside the small town of Esquelbecq. It is now known as the site of the Wormhout Massacre.

An SS unit rounded up and murdered 80 British troops who had held up their advance to Dunkirk during spring 1940.

They were taken to a tiny cowshed in the middle of a field and grenades were thrown inside and machine gun chatter cracked through the air as the men were killed.

Miraculously 15 survived and managed to escape.

The cowshed has been rebuilt as a mark of respect and the whole area has been turned into a memorial for the men who died.

As with so many of these types of memorials the mood is captured perfectly. The wind rustling through the trees today brings the air of peace afforded to these men following the atrocities carried out against them by ruthless Nazis.

An injustice of war was that while these men died the SS commander lived into his 90s and never saw a trial for his crimes.

A very different but equally sobering sight is the final resting place of the Ramsgate paddle steamer, the Crested Eagle, which served the route to London along the Thames before being commandeered as a troop ship.

She was divebombed by a Stuka during the evacuations and after catching fire limped to the shoreline where her captain ran her aground into the beach to prevent her being captured by the Germans.

More than 300 men lost their lives in the episode with locals believing dozens are still buried in the sand surrounding her.

The story of the war is of course one of the main things to talk about in this part of France.

But there is far more to this area than its bombed out rebuilt towns, churches and relics.

Driving through the area and the countryside is beautiful, the beaches long and sandy and dunes to explore for the more adventurous.

It is still very much a working part of France and there are some little known gems like the small Thiriez brewery in the village of Esquelbecq.

As in Britain, craft beers and unique micro breweries are seeing a renaissance in France.

Brewers are taking advantage of this and tours of the brew houses and traditional tasting rooms and bars are a relaxing way to find out more about the real France.

And of course it’s France, so eating out is never going to be an issue. Restaurants are well priced and offer very good food so after all that touring there won’t be empty stomachs by the end of the day.

Strategically important

It is a part of the country which has always been thought to be under threat of invasion right back into the Middle Ages – that is evident in so many locations throughout the area and the story they tell is quite compelling.

Much of this area has been fortified in different guises over the preceeding centuries.
The small town of Gravelines just about a 10 minute drive from the ferry terminal at Dunkirk is a wonderfully unique place.

It is the only fortified town in France to be entirely surrounded by water.
High stone walls border this quaint sleepy little town with a moat reaching right around the edge.

The town originally dates back to the Middle Ages when it was under Spanish control as part of the Spanish Netherlands colony.

The fortifications were completed once it had returned to France under Louis XIV in the 17th century. The walls now form a beautiful walkway around the town which takes around an hour and visitors can hire boats to leisurely glide around the town on the water.

Even this quiet town had an important role in the story of the Dunkirk evacuations.

Hitler ordered his troops to hold up short of Dunkirk at Gravelines which allowed the Allies to organise the evacuation of their troops.

Had he ordered them to carry on advancing, the evacuations – although in the grand scheme of things was a defeat for the British – might not have seen quite so many men successfully get out of France to fight another day.

Dunkirk, France

Travel time: 2 hours by DFDS ferry from Dover - crossings start at £39 each way
Where to stay: 4* Hotel Borel - very comfortable rooms and beds with good shower facilities. Double room priced 97€ (£73) per night including breakfast
Where to eat: Commes Vous Voulez in Malo les Bains, Dunkirk promenade. Evening set menu 25.50€ (£19)
Dunkirk stars Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Kenneth Branagh and debuts Harry Styles is due for cinema release in July 2017