Sacrario di Redipuglia

20. Sept.

The military memorial Sacrario di Redipuglia (Sredipolje in Slovenian) is located in the municipal area of Fogliano Redipuglia (province of Gorizia-Gorizia). It is the largest war memorial in Italy and was built according to the plans of architect Giovanni Greppi and sculptor Giannino Castiglioni and inaugurated in 1938. It houses the remains of about 100,000 fallen soldiers of the First World War.

Photographer: Roland Steffen - Pictures not to be used without my explicit permission.

The memorial is located between Monfalcone and Gradisca, about 5 kilometers west of the Slovenian border. It was built on the slopes of Monte Sei Busi, which was fiercely contested during the first phase of the war. This inconspicuous hill formed a strategically important position on the lower Isonzo and the access to the plateaus of the western Karst, and thus the southern wing of the entire Alpine front.

The Italians struggled here to gain control of the important access to the Austrian city of Trieste. In most of the Isonzo battles between 1915 and 1917, the fiercest fighting took place here, and the Italians were only able to advance the front line about 1½ kilometers to Monte San Michele in a year of bitter positional warfare.

Not far from the mausoleum are the Parco Tematico della Grande Guerra di Monfalcone and the Museo all'aperto del Monte San Michele.

The entrance to the mausoleum is symbolically bordered by a large anchor chain, which comes from the torpedo boat Grado. Just behind it, a spacious square, paved with slabs of karstic stone, extends slightly uphill. The center line is formed by the Via Eroica ('Heroes' Road'). It runs between two rows of bronze plaques (19 plaques on each side), which bear the names of those places where the hardest and bloodiest battles took place. At the end of the "Heroes' Road" stands the tomb of the Duke of Aosta, the commander-in-chief of the Third Army. The Duke died in 1931 and was buried here on the basis of his last will and testament as a former commander of the 3rd Army. The tomb was carved out of a 75-ton porphyry monolith. It is flanked by the urn graves of fallen generals of the 3rd Army.

Behind it rises a giant staircase with 22 steps, with graves of known 100,187 fallen (as of 2015) integrated into the steps. This arrangement is meant to suggest a large roll call square where the fallen are symbolically lined up, called out, and shout "Here!", which is meant to be expressed by the lettering Presente, placed above each grave site at the top of each step.

On the lower steps are the gravesites of the 39,857 identified Italian fallen, in alphabetical order from bottom to top. Each grave site is marked by a bronze plaque with name and rank. On the last step are three crosses. Below them is a memorial chapel. In the adjoining rooms there are exhibits of equipment of the fallen, both of Italian and Austro-Hungarian origin. To the right and to the left of these rooms, in this last step, there is the common grave of the approximately 60,330 unidentified fallen.

P.S: “Ironically, the monument was completed in 1938 - one year before the beginning of the second World War - Mankind, unfortunately, has learned nothing from it until today.

By the way - I have already visited this memorial once - but as a 6-year-old boy in 1966. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember exactly but there is an old photo...”