Mount Sabotino, the northern bastion of the Austro-Hungarian bridgehead of Gorizia, represented a key point on the Isonzo front from the beginning of the Italo-Austrian War of 1915-18.

An extraordinary fortress in stone, this relief still shows today valuable evidence of the art of fortification practiced first by the Austro-Hungarian technical departments and, after August 1916, by the Italian ones who transformed it into a real underground bulwark.

This volume of the series “Archeologia di guerra” offers the public a tool to understand the fascinating metamorphosis of a mountain that for its war history entered the collective myth of the Great War, was declared a Monumental Zone in 1922, went through the Second World War, the vicissitudes of the new border between two worlds, the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain, to transform itself into an open-air museum with a cross-border vocation. Sabotino: 609 meters of rock, an eternal treasure chest of wars, wounds, scars, memories, recollections, returns from the past to us, today.

Mark Mantini, The monumental area of ​​Mount Sabotino. History and memory of the extraordinary fortress on the Isonzo, Gaspari, Udine 2021.

Mark Mantini (Gorizia, 1966) collaborates with various Italian and Slovenian institutions and associations in the field of historical research and the recovery of the material memory of the First World War on the Isonzo front. In the publishing field, he participates with various authors in the creation of historical-excursion guides and historical essays. For the publisher Gaspari he has published: From Tolmino to Caporetto. The Great War Routes between Italy and Slovenia (I, II ed.); Traveling through history. From the Adriatic to the Monte Croce Carnico pass; The story of the signs of the Great War ; The Monumental Zone of Monte San Michele. From a Theater of War to a Landscape of Memory ; with P. Gaspari and P. Pozzato: Generals in the fog. The 36 hours of battle of the 43rd Division, from Monte Nero to the Caporetto bridge ; with S. Stok: THE TRACKS OF THE TRENCHES ON THE ISONZO FRONT – Vol.3, part 2 II and III.