 ossuary is on a plateau, the architect gave the structure a sense of elevation through a series of twenty-two terraces. Although the site is dotted with various and sundry tombs of the generals, such as the Duke of Aosta, the commander of the Third Army, the common soldier is celebrated with the repetition of one word, “presente.” It is as if the dead soldiers hear their names once again, stand to attention, announce their presence, and remind the visitor “we are here.”
According to Hannah Malone in her article, “Fascist Italy’s Ossuaries of the First World War: Objects or Symbols?” “That word refers to the Fascist ritual of the appello or roll call; that is, when an officer called out the name of the dead and his comrades answered presente, meaning that the dead are forever present in the memory of the living and are always ready to serve.” She continued, “However, despite the reiteration of presente, individual histories and memories are notably absent at Redipuglia. The actual identities of the fallen are practically annihilated and the dead are not remembered as husbands, fathers, and sons, but only as soldiers. The annulment of the identities of all but the very highest ranks was elitist, rather than egalitarian, as it underlined the separation of the celebrated, but largely incompetent, commanders from the mass. Their elevation was in line with a Fascist attachment to the principle of hierarchy and to the cult of the leader. Moreover, the narrative that is expressed by Redipuglia obscures the fact that, unlike the hundred thousand soldiers that made up the mass, none of the commanders died in battle, but passed away peacefully in post-war Italy.”
Greppi used the Italian system of perspective in building his receding ascending staircases, presenting the pilgrim with a journey, a series of stations leading to three plain and stark crosses. The staircase or series of terraces act like the horizontal grids of a perspective drawing, drawing the visitor towards a horizon line. As one walks, the horizon line slips 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 