s back further and the vanishing point leads one onward. Eventually, the climax of the journey is achieved and the vanishing point itself is reached as three crosses crest the straight ridge lines of the levels. The implication is that the fallen soldiers were also fallen martyrs, who are watched over by the Trinity. The three crosses preside over a chapel, which is invisible at the beginning of the journey, and then, at the end, they begin to appear, silhouetted against the sky. Here, behind bronze doors lie trentamila militi ignoti or the remains of thirty thousand unknown soldiers. Although it is far less well-known, Il Sacrario di Redipuglia is, in its scale and impact, comparable to the Douaumont Ossuary, marking the many battles of Verdun and the Thiepval Memorial of the Missing of the Somme. The font used for the memorial is (ancient) Roman, referencing the fact that, as Dato wrote, this Adriatic area was called Venezia Giulia or Julian Venice or the Julian March. From Mussolini’s perspective, the classical assemblage of Redipuglia was meant to rewrite history. Here, like ancient Romans, rest the modern soldiers of the Great War, who would be symbolically mobilized to demonstrate that he, Mussolini, was going to “restore the splendor of the Roman Empire,” as Dato said and continued, “Based on these complex historical events, we can argue that the Adriatic borderland is a place where the Latin, Germanic and Slavic worlds meet and clash..the culture of commemoration in the northern Adriatic region, after the Great War, reflected the change in social and political relationships in European Society: the new role of the masses, a greater acknowledgment of the individual dimension of life, the new concepts of citizenship and universal suffrage and other sociocultural features typical of the new century.”
The site, its significations of pilgrimage and stations of suffering, was far more than a mere graveyard, a repositioning of bones: Il Sacrario di Redipuglia was obviously intended to write a new chapter in the political use of the sacrifice of ill-fated young men. In other words, the ossuary does not look back to the actual battles of the Great War, but beckons forward: be worthy of the sacrifice of these brave men and be prepared to sacrifice once again in the new war coming. Mussolini intended to wipe out the history of defeat and shame and to replace the trauma of loss with the myth of coming imperial glory in the twentieth century. The meaning of the “unknown soldier”–the sad loss of identity of thousands–was replaced by Italian Fascist notions of masses of nameless people following the dictator into war. From the tragedy of having no identity to the loss of identity as being a positive attribute for Fascism. The shrouding of individuals in unwanted uniforms discussed in previous posts is activated once again here with an over-arching theme of generals and soldiers lying together ready to march once more for the glory of the Emperor. It is no accident that it was first D’Annunzio and then Mussolini who revived the ancient Roman salute of the raised and stiff salute, the arm stretching out towards the great leader while signifying, “we who are about to die, salute you.” As Dato pointed out, the meaning of the reactivated myth was blunted by the Italian alliance with Germany, the enemy during the last war. A new generation of Italian men would fight and die to honor these symbolic corpses.
But there is more to say about the interwar construction of funerary architecture under Italian fascism in Part Two.
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Dr. Jeanne S. M. Willette and Art History Unstuffed.