WAR MEMORIAL (Monumento ai caduti)

THE HISTORY

The fountain and the whole monumental complex of the monument in honor of the fallen of all wars located in Piazzale Umberto I, is the result of a complex change that the previous monuments to the fallen of the wars made in Vitorchiano underwent and merged definitively in the 90s in the monument existing today. The first war memorial erected for the fallen of the First World War built immediately after the war, was located in the same location as the present one, with the tank already visible today and a slab containing all the names of the fallen in the war. After the Second World War, near the center of the square, another monument dedicated to the fallen of the Second World War was erected, characterized by a large parallelepiped that supported a large slab carved in peperino, depicting a soldier, remembered according to oral tradition like “Alessione”, in memory of the name of a huge Vitorchianese soldier. In the 1960s, the war memorial leaning against the walls was completely rebuilt. Only the seventeenth-century basin of the original monument was preserved. The old slab with the names was replaced with a new one in marble which now included the fallen of the first and second wars. Only in the 90s / 91s did the monument acquire its present appearance. The marble slab was replaced with one in peperino, and the sculpture of “Alessione” was integrated, which in the meantime had been abandoned with the whole monument, and left to fortune resting in the fields near Vitorchiano. The last transformation took place in 1997, when the names of the soldiers who died in Lebanon were added.

DESCRIPTION

The monument to the fallen of all wars leaning against the outer walls of the city, consists of a fountain with a large shaped basin which in turn contains another specular but smaller one. Both rest on a base also shaped and raised from the floor, and are leaning against a large slab of peperino affixed to the walls, on which there is a soldier in high-relief peperino “” Alessione “, with military clothes and boots, helmet and saddlebag, with a stone in his left hand and a sword handle behind his back. An epigraph with the names of the war dead, engraved with the start and end dates of the wars in which the valiant men of Vitorchiano lost their lives on the left; on the right an epigraph with the dedicatory phrase consisting of metal letters applied to the peperino plate that reads: “FALLEN FOR THE HOMELAND-FALLEN FOR PEACE-NAQOURA-LEBANON”. Below “M.C. MAXIMUM CATS 6-8-97 “. is the memory of the first marshal Massimo Gatti, who died in Lebanon, where he was employed in the context of the ITALAIR contingent of UNIFIL, on 6 August 1997, during an air mission in which the Major pilot Antonino Sgrò, the pilot Captain, also lost his life Giuseppe Parisi, the Appointed Officer of the Carabinieri Daniel Forner and an Irish soldier. The monument concludes with a statuette of an angel in flight in the round in bronze applied at the top, and a dedicatory sentence further on. A further square peperino slab with a broken upper left corner forms the background of everything, a broken line that is reproduced engraved on the entire slab. The memory of the AVES non-commissioned officer. Massimo Gatti, in addition to being present on the monument to the memory of the fallen of all wars, is also present in Vitorchiano, in the locality of Paparano, with the naming of a street in honor of him.

ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

AA. VV. Comunità parrocchiale SS. Trinità in Vitorchiano. Libretto dei canti. Vitorchiano 1935. P. 35

Special thanks to Dr. Andrea Presutti for scientific advice and archival photographic material provided on Vitorchiano.