Ossario del Pasubio
| Ossario del Pasubio | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Data | |
| place | Valli del Pasubio , Vicenza Province |
| architect | Ferruccio Chemello |
| Construction year | 1920-1926 |
| height | 35 m |
| Coordinates | 45 ° 45 '6.3 " N , 11 ° 11' 34.4" E |
The Valli del Pasubio memorial or ossuary of Pasubio ( Italian Sacrario Militare di Valli del Pasubio or Ossario del Pasubio ) is located in the northern Italian municipality of Valli del Pasubio in the province of Vicenza . The monumental building from the 1920s contains the bones of over 5,000 fallen from the First World War .
location
The memorial was built on the Colle Bellavista, a promontory east of Monte Cornetto above the Val Leogra, at an altitude of 1217 m slm . It is located about two kilometers from the Passo Pian delle Fugazze from which a road branches off to the ossuary .
history
The first plans to build a memorial on Monte Pasubio go back to the time of the First World War, when members of the 1st Italian Army erected a small memorial shrine on Pasubio in December 1917. The then Bishop of Vicenza took up this initiative and formed a committee for the construction of a memorial, which was soon followed by the desire to build an ossuary next to the memorial . After the end of the war, the commander of the 1st Army Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi joined the committee in December 1918 and became its president. In 1920 the Colle Bellavista at the foot of the Pasubio was chosen as the location. After the municipality of Valli del Pasubio had provided the land, construction work began in the same year. The architect Ferruccio Chemello from Schio was entrusted with the execution . First of all, the access road from the Pian delle Fugazze pass was built.
The foundation stone for the ossuary was laid on July 1, 1920 by Celestino Endrici , Archbishop of Trento . Black quarry stone was used for the construction, which was broken in a quarry at the foot of Monte Cornetto and transported to the construction site on a material cable car built by the Italian army . The white marble that was also used came from the marble quarries at Piovene Rocchette and Magrè near Schio . In the summer of 1921, parts of the ossuary were completed to such an extent that the bones of 2,000 dead could be transferred. In November 1924 the roof of the tower was completed and the exterior work was as good as completed. The interior was designed between 1925 and 1926. The order for this was given to the artist Tito Chini from Florence , who decorated the inner walls of the tower with Art Nouveau frescoes. On August 26, 1926, the memorial was opened in the presence of the Italian King Viktor Emanuel III. after six years of construction, which dragged on due to financial difficulties, will finally be inaugurated.
In 1953 the remains of Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi were transferred to the ossuary. The memorial was restored between 2014 and 2016, including Tito Chini's wall decorations that were damaged by moisture.
The memorial is maintained and managed by a foundation set up especially for this purpose in 1921 ( Fondazione 3 novembre 1918 ), to which various public bodies, including the two provinces of Vicenza and Trento , belong. The foundation still owns the memorial.
description
The complex consists of two structures, the tower-like memorial, which also houses a chapel with a chancel and a plinth underneath, the actual ossuary with the grave niches. The tower and ossuary have their own entrance exactly opposite. The entire building is surrounded by a large outdoor area on which some Italian and Austro-Hungarian guns from the First World War are lined up.
Ossuary
The entrance to the ground floor ossuary, on which the tower rests, faces east. A central corridor leads from the entrance directly into the crypt , which is located in the middle of the building and was also artistically designed by Tito Chini. In the crypt there is also the final resting place of Guglielmo Pecori Giraldi and another 59 soldiers buried with military awards. Immediately after the entrance of the main corridor, two side corridors turn off to the left and right, in which the other tombs are located. In the outer corridors there are 450 individual graves marked by name, while in the two inner side corridors, which can be reached via a few steps, 94 communal graves for the unidentified dead are housed. A total of 1,629 known by name and 3,400 unknown Italian and 60 unknown Austro-Hungarian soldiers are buried in the ossuary.
tower
The 31.50 m high tower, which narrows towards the top, can be reached via a 3.50 m high flight of stairs exactly opposite the entrance to the ossuary . It has a total of four floors plus a mezzanine. On the first floor there is the chapel with a statue of the Madonna in white Carrara marble by the sculptor Giuseppe Zanetti. The walls are decorated with various figures of saints, which, like the other frescoes on the floors above, are the work of Tito Chini. A picture of the Trinity on the ceiling . Sufficient daylight comes in through three large windows, which are also decorated with stained glass. A stone staircase leads over a mezzanine floor to the second floor with the so-called Hall of Waiting, a small and almost gloomy room compared to the chapel, with monochromatic figures of soldiers who persist in sitting. On the third floor is the Apotheosis room with celebrating war motifs, including the portrait of Pecori Giraldi in one corner. A steep iron staircase leads to the final domed hall on the fourth floor, which is adorned with a golden sun disk in the middle of the dome. There are cross-shaped windows in the four niches.
The memorial also includes a small war museum, which is housed in a separate building to the right of the entrance to the memorial area.
photos
Tito Chini at the foot of the staircase leading to the tower entrance
The memorial at its inauguration in 1926
The tower with the entrance
Access
Panoramic shot
Austrian and Italian guns in the outside area
literature
- Lisa Bregantin, Denis Vidale: Sentinelle di pietra. I grandi sacrari del primo conflitto mondiale , Biblioteca dei Leoni, Castelfranco Veneto, 2016.
- Fondazione 3 November 1918 (Ed.): Custodi delle memoria. 100 anni dalla Grande Guerra , Vicenza, 2016.
- Ministero della Difesa, Comitato Generale Onoranze Caduti in Guerra (ed.): Sacrari militari della prima guerra mondiale 1915–1918. Asiago Pasubio ed altri vicini sacrari militari italiani e stranieri. Rome 1971.
Web links
- Website of the memorial in Italian , accessed on March 22, 2017.
- Information and opening times for the memorial in German , accessed on March 21, 2017.
- Information and photos in Italian , accessed March 21, 2017.
References and comments
- ↑ Fondazione 3 November 1918 (Ed.): Custodi delle memoria. 100 anni dalla Grande Guerra , Vicenza, 2016 pp. 12-13
- ↑ The artist family Chini had already carried out work in the middle of the 19th century in the family villa of the Pecori Giraldis in Borgo San Lorenzo . Tito Chini had been commissioned by Pecori Giraldi a few years earlier to restore wall decorations in the villa. See Villa Pecori Giraldi in Italian.Retrieved March 22, 2017
- ↑ Fondazione 3 November 1918 (Ed.): Custodi delle memoria. 100 anni dalla Grande Guerra pp. 18-25
- ↑ a b c History of the Pasubio Memorial in Italian , accessed on March 22, 2017
- ↑ Fondazione 3 November 1918 (Ed.): Custodi delle memoria. 100 anni dalla Grande Guerra pp. 30-33
- ↑ Database with all known burials in Italian , accessed on March 23, 2017