Located in the commune of Portel, in Pas-de-Calais, the Alprech fort is located on a defense and lookout post favored since Antiquity, the Cap d'Alprech.
Fort Alprech is a coastal battery from the Séré de Rivières system and built at the end of the 1870s, under the Third Republic, it forms with three other relatively similar forts, a defensive line of 6 km, responsible for defending the port of Boulogne from an attack coming from the sea.
In May 1940, the fort, provided with weak defense, was taken at the start of the Battle of Boulogne in the morning of May 23.
Now under the German Occupation, it became "the eye of the Kriegsmarine", which will install naval detection devices there, mainly radars, for the German naval units present in large numbers on the coast to deny Pas de Calais to the Allies (coastal batteries, torpedo launchers, etc.).
It will also be a support point for the Atlantic Wall, integrated into the Boulogne fortress, one of the most important and fiercely defended ports of the Atlantikwall. Despite everything, it received a relatively weak defense, and was one of the last German points of resistance taken by the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in Boulonnais, on September 22, 1944, the sixth and last day of Operation Wellhit.
Abandoned over time, it was completely restored at the end of the 1990s. Today, owned by the Conservatoire du littoral, the Fort Cap d'Alprech association organizes, among other things, guided tours and opens for the occasion all the buildings present on the site as well as a blockhouse from the Second World War, the only example built in the entire region.
The association's motto: Backup - Memory - Transmission.
