During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, more than 5,000 French soldiers were taken prisoner in the citadel of the town of Kołobrzeg in Western Pomerania. Nearly 180 of them perished and were buried by their comrades-in-arms in a collective grave.
Today, in the centre of the cemetery, at the end of a small paved path, there is a symbolic grave, made up of a large overhanging slab without a base and a stele; the tombstone bears an inscription in golden letters, in French, translated into Polish in smaller characters on the stele. It reads: "In memory of the 180 French prisoners buried in this place. 1870-1871. Their comrades". At the rear, a small flower-filled space adorns the grave. On one side of the cemetery there is also an informational plaque with a short text in Polish, German, French and English. The site is maintained by the municipal service in charge of green spaces, roads and environmental protection, and constitutes a green space in the town, dotted with hedges, shrubs and tulips, planted by a nursery-school class in 2014 as part of the EU's general environmental action programme "Living well, within the limits of our planet".