La Coupole, also called the Coupole d'Helfaut-Wizernes, sits about five kilometers from Saint-Omer in the Pas-de-Calais, France. Its original codename was Building Project 21. Nazi Germany built it between October 1943 and July 1944 as a V-2 rocket launch base for targets in London and southern England. The Todt Organisation built it in a disused chalk quarry, and it was never completed or put into service.
The planned concrete dome was 71 meters in diameter and 5 meters thick. The complex was to include about 7 kilometers of tunnels and an octagonal rocket-preparation chamber 41 meters across.
Allied forces bombed the site repeatedly in 1944, and they captured it in September 1944. It opened as a museum in May 1997 after a restoration project, and a planetarium opened in July 2012.
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