The military memorial of Monte Grappa is the largest Italian military ossuary of the First World War. [1] It is located on the summit of Monte Grappa between the provinces of Treviso and Vicenza, at 1,776 meters above sea level. [2] Access to the memorial is via the Strada Cadorna, built by the army on the orders of General Luigi Cadorna to bring construction materials for the fortification on Monte Grappa in 1917. [3]
A census in 1920 by the General Commission for Honouring the War Dead showed that there were 140 small cemeteries with the remains of around 40.000 dead on the slopes of the mountain. [4] In 1923 a national committee was established to gather all the remains on the mountain for reinterrment. In 1925 it was decided to build a single monumental cemetery in the tunnels under the summit of the mountain, but, once the works were completed, there were problems with damp in the newly built tunnels and Mussolini did not approve the project. The committee was dismissed and in 1932 Mussolini placed General Ugo Cei in charge of a new commission tasked with building a suitably monumental ossuary. It was therefore decided to build the current outdoor military shrine. [1] [5]
The design was by the same pair who created the Redipuglia War Memorial and The Italian Charnel House, Kobarid, architect Giovanni Greppi and sculptor Giannino Castiglioni. [6] Construction took only eight months and involved 3,000 workers. [5] The shrine was formally inaugurated on 22 September 1935. It is made up of a series of semicircular levels of decreasing sizes leading to the top of the shrine. The characteristic element of the shrine is the dovetail motif used for the niches that house the bodies of fallen soldiers. The columbarium model, together with the use of stone and bronze for the closures of the niches, recalls the Roman classicism so much in favour during the Fascist period.
The shrine contains the remains of 22,950 soldiers. [2] The northern sector contains the Austro-Hungarian ossuary with the remains of 10,295 dead of whom 295 have been identified. The southern sector houses the Italian ossuary with the remains of 12,615 dead of whom 2,283 have been identified. Running between them is the 300m long Via Eroica. The 14 monoliths along it bear the names of mountain peaks which were the scene of intense fighting during the war. Along it are buried 40 soldiers whose remains were found after the construction of the shrine. At the beginning of the heroic road, to the north, there is the Portale Roma, designed and built by the architect Alessandro Limongelli . On the portal is carved: "Monte Grappa you are my homeland" , the first verse of the song “Monte Grappa“. [2]
At the center of the Italian ossuary is the chapel of the Madonna del Grappa, placed on the summit on 4 August 1901 by the patriarch of Venice Giuseppe Sarto (later Pope Pius X), a symbol of the Christian faith in the Veneto. During the First World War, the statue found itself in the middle of a battlefield, and was damaged by an Austrian grenade. After the war it as removed for repair and restoration and was displayed in a number of cities before being returned to its place in the chapel around which the Memorial was later built. [7] [8]
The shrine also contains the tomb of Marshal Gaetano Giardino, who commanded the Italian forces on the mountain during its defence in 1917–18.
The 1st Army was a Royal Italian Army field army, in World War I, facing Austro-Hungarian and German forces, and in World War II, fighting on the North African front.
The Battle of Vittorio Veneto was fought from 24 October to 3 November 1918 near Vittorio Veneto on the Italian Front during World War I. After having thoroughly defeated Austro-Hungarian troops during the defensive Battle of the Piave River, the Italian army launched a great counter-offensive: the Italian victory marked the end of the war on the Italian Front, secured the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and contributed to the end of the First World War just one week later. On 1 November, the new Hungarian government of Count Mihály Károlyi decided to recall all of the troops, who were conscripted from the territory of Kingdom of Hungary, which was a major blow for the Habsburg's armies. The battle led to the capture of over 5,000 artillery pieces and over 350,000 Austro-Hungarian troops, including 120,000 Germans, 83,000 Czechs and Slovaks, 60,000 South Slavs, 40,000 Poles, several tens of thousands of Romanians and Ukrainians, and 7,000 Austro-Hungarian loyalist Italians and Friulians.
Monte Grappa is a mountain of the Venetian Prealps in Veneto, Italy. It lies between the Venetian plain to the south and the central alpine areas to the North. To the west, it is parted from the Asiago upland by the Brenta river, and to the east it is separated from the Cesen-Visentin massif by the Piave river. To the north lie Corlo lake and Feltre valley. In the past, the mountain was called Alpe Madre, and is currently divided among three provinces: Vicenza to the west, Treviso to the south and Belluno to the northeast. It is the highest peak of a small massif, which also includes many other peaks such as Col Moschin, Colle della Berretta, Monte Asolone, Monte Pertica, Prassolan, Monti Solaroli, Fontana Secca, Monte Peurna, Monte Santo, Monte Tomatico, Meatte, Monte Pallon, and Monte Tomba.
The Battle of Asiago(Battle of the Plateaux) or the Südtirol Offensive (in Italian: Battaglia degli Altipiani), nicknamed Strafexpedition ("Punitive expedition") by the Austro-Hungarian forces, was a major offensive launched by the Austro-Hungarians on the territory of Vicentine Alps in the Italian Front on 15 May 1916, during World War I. It was an "unexpected" attack that took place near Asiago in the province of Vicenza (now in northeast Italy, then on the Italian side of the border between the Kingdom of Italy and Austria-Hungary) after the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo (March 1916).
Luigi Capello was an Italian general, distinguished in both the Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) and World War I.
The Battle of Mount Ortigara was fought from 10 to 25 June 1917 between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies for possession of Mount Ortigara, in the Asiago Plateau.
San Biagio di Callalta is a comune (municipality) in the province of Treviso, Veneto, north-eastern Italy.
The Asiago War Memorial is a World War I memorial located in the town of Asiago in the Province of Vicenza in the Veneto region of northeast Italy. Surrounded by mountains that were the site of several World War I battles, the monument houses the remains of over 50,000 Italian and Austro-Hungarian soldiers and is a popular destination for travelers to the region. In Italian the memorial is typically called Sacrario Militare di Asiago or Sacrario Militare del Leiten. Leiten is the name of the hill on which the memorial sits.
Sacrario militare di Pocol is a cemetery and shrine near the Falzarego Pass, in the locality of Pocol in the comune of Cortina d'Ampezzo in the Veneto region of northern Italy. The small church and cemetery were built in 1916 as a military cemetery by the 5th Alpine group. A shrine was built in 1935 as memorial to the thousands who died during World War I on the Dolomite front. It is a massive square tower of stone, clearly visible from the entire Ampezzo valley below. The remains of 9,707 Italian soldiers and 37 Austro-Hungarian soldiers are buried in the shrine. In a crypt in the centre of the structure rests the body of general Antonio Cantore, who was awarded the gold medal for military valor.
The Sacrario dei Caduti Oltremare is a World War II memorial located in the city of Bari, in the Apulia region of Southern Italy. The shrine, inaugurated in 1967, houses the remains of 75,098 Italian soldiers killed overseas in both World Wars as well as in Italy's colonial wars.
The Redipuglia War Memorial is a World War I memorial located on the Karst Plateau near the village of Fogliano Redipuglia, in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of northeastern Italy. It is the largest war memorial in Italy and one of the largest in the world, housing the remains of 100,187 Italian soldiers killed between 1915 and 1917 in the eleven battles fought on the Karst and Isonzo front.
The Italian Charnel House, Kobarid is an Italian military shrine in Kobarid, Slovenia. Sited on the battlefield of Caporetto, it houses the remains of 7,014 Italians who fell during the battles of the Isonzo.
The Cadorna Line, officially the Northern Frontier, was the Italian defensive system on the northern border facing Switzerland, designed and built between 1899 and 1918. Its purpose was to protect the Po Valley and its main industrial centres from an attack by France, Germany or Austria-Hungary violating Swiss neutrality.
Between the 1860s and the First World War the Kingdom of Italy built a number of fortifications along its border with Austria-Hungary. From 1859 the fortified border ran south from Switzerland to Lake Garda, between Italian Lombardy and Austrian South Tyrol. After 1866 it extended to include the border between South Tyrol and Veneto, from Lake Garda to the Carnic Alps. This frontier was difficult to defend, since Austria-Hungary held the higher ground, and an invasion would immediately threaten the industrial and agricultural heartlands of the Po valley. Between 1900 and 1910, Italy also built a series of fortifications along the defensive line of the Tagliamento to protect against an invasion from the northeast. The border with Switzerland was also fortified in what is known as the Cadorna Line.
The Oslavia War Memorial is an Italian monument to soldiers who fell in battle during the battles of the Isonzo, particularly those who died during the taking of Gorizia in 1916. It stands on a 150m hill in the village of Oslavia, on the outskirts of Gorizia. The hilltop was on the front line as Austro-Hungarian troops defended the salient around Gorizia during the first, third and fourth battles of the Isonzo.
The Italian Generals of the Great War, C-Z is an essay published by historians Paolo Gaspari, Paolo Pozzato and Ferdinando Scala in 2019, with an introduction by historian Filippo Cappellano and published in collaboration with the History Office of the Italian Army. It is the second volume of an encyclopedic series dedicated to the biographies of over six hundred Italian general officers who fought in the Great War on the Italian front and abroad, and concludes the work begun in 2011 with the publication of The Italian Generals of the Great War, A-B.
Ugo Cei was an Italian general and politician, who particularly distinguished himself during the First World War as brigade commander. In February 1935 he was appointed extraordinary Commissioner for honors for those who had died in war in Italy and abroad, and on March 25, 1939 he was made a Senator of the Kingdom. His decorations included the Knight Grand Cross and Officer of the Military Order of Savoy, three Medals of Military Valor and the War Cross of Military Valor.
Giovanni Greppi was an Italian architect best known for having designed some of the most famous military shrines in Italy.
Antonino Di Giorgio was an Italian general and politician, who fought in the First Italo-Ethiopian War, the Italo-Turkish War and the First World War, and served as Minister of War of the Kingdom of Italy from April 1924 to April 1925. He resigned after the rejection of his plan for a radical reform of the Royal Italian Army.
Paolo Morrone was an Italian general, politician and Minister of War in the second Salandra government and in the Boselli government. He was among the leading military figures of the First World War.
