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Glory, apotheosis of the unknown soldier
On November 4, 1918, Italy defeated Austria-Hungary in what for many of its compatriots was the Fourth War of Independence, the one necessary to complete the Risorgimento's journey toward national unification. It was a devastating conflict for all of Europe, and contemporaries called it the Great War. The human cost borne by Italy was over 650.000 dead and 1.5 million wounded, maimed, and disabled. The fury of the fighting and the destructive power of the new weapons left countless bodies unaccounted for on all battlefronts, and the "Unknown Soldier" entered the collective imagination as an example of absolute dedication and ultimate sacrifice for...
Reopening of the Great War Museum in Gorizia
Following major renovations to the building and the creation of a new exhibition layout, the Great War Museum in Gorizia has reopened to the public, with admission free through Friday, July 25th. Located in the historic site of the Provincial Museums of Borgo Castello, managed by Erpac FVG since 2016, the renovated section dedicated to the Great War was conceived as a "Museum for Europe," with a new exhibition curated by Alessandra Martina and Lucio Fabi. Following a path that winds through ten rooms, each with a specific theme, the exhibits—uniforms and equipment, weapons, ammunition, documents, and photographs—...
Guido Brunner, irredentist hero from Trieste
On May 24, 1915, after having denounced the Triple Alliance signed in 1882 with Germany and Austria-Hungary and renewed several times, and having obtained from the Triple Entente with the London Pact ample assurances regarding its claims, Italy declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire to complete the work of national reunification that had been interrupted after the three Wars of Independence of the Risorgimento era. For almost a year, what contemporaries had called the Great War had broken out, and hundreds of Italian subjects of Vienna had exfiltrated from the Habsburg territories, who did not intend to fight in the imperial-royal army, but rather hoped...
From Isonzo to Piave. Clandestine Letters of a War Correspondent
The first journalist from the Kingdom of Italy to land in Trieste, redeemed by the destroyer Audace on November 3, 1918, Rino Alessi (former director of the “Giornale del mattino” in Bologna) volunteered for the engineers at the outbreak of war in 1915, sending a series of articles from the front to “Il Secolo” in Milan, directed by Giuseppe Pontremoli. At the suggestion of General Porro Della Bicocca, deputy chief of staff under Cadorna, Alessi was called in April 1916 to the press office accredited to the Supreme Command. While his letters continued to appear in “Il Secolo”, “Il Messaggero” in Rome and “Il Giornale del mattino” in Bologna,...
Before Redipuglia: the cemetery of Sant'Elia hill
The Third Army Cemetery of the Invincibles on the S. Elia hill was consecrated on May 24, 1923 in the presence of the highest officials of the Kingdom, the most important military authorities and a huge crowd of veterans. It was, in fact, the Italian response to the urgent need to assign a first dignified burial to the fallen, in this specific case to the tens of thousands of Third Army fighters who died on the Carso which, at the end of the conflict, appeared like an infinite field cemetery. Exceptional from a conceptual point of view, shocking in impact, highly original in its form, powerfully evocative of the Carso battlefield, grandiose both in...
Lustig Piacezzi, a doctor from Trieste who fought chemical warfare
What was the 'typical' profile of a doctor in nineteenth-century Trieste? Taking the period from 1860 onwards as a reference point, the Trieste doctor came from a middle-class family; often with Jewish origins, but with secular convictions, educated in the latest scientific innovations. The training took place first in Trieste, in close contact with a humanistic culture that looked to Italy, but accompanied by teaching in German for scientific subjects. The aspiring medical student then learned his trade at the University of Vienna; or to a lesser extent in Graz or Prague; and it was in the impetuous university years that the student acquired - often,...
Ice and Blood: The Alpini on the Plateaus
The winter between 1916 and 1917 was the most difficult. It was now clear to everyone, from the commanders to the men at the front, that the war would be long, exhausting and without significant turning points. Along the line dividing the Kingdom of Italy and the Habsburg Empire, from Adamello to the Carso and the Isonzo, the armies faced each other with frontal assaults. But in some points of this long front the soldiers also had to fight against the adversities of nature. One of the most sensitive points was the Asiago Plateau. The Battle of the Plateaus Italy's entry into the war against the Central Powers was "greeted" from the Venetian Plateau with a mortar shot from...
The man who unites without dividing: this is who the Unknown Soldier was
He was not a king nor a national hero: but all Italians remember him without divisions or partisanship The Centenary of the Unknown Soldier reminds us of that man to whom, uninterruptedly, all Italians pay homage, without divisions or partisanship. He is not a national hero, not a great general, not a King, not even a President of the Republic. Perhaps he was a humble peasant from the South, or a mountaineer from Piedmont, or a fisherman from the Adriatic Riviera... There is also a one in 200.000 chance - that is how many unidentified bodies there were at the end of the Great War - that it could be precisely that irredentist lieutenant, son of Maria Bergamas. We will never know...
103 years ago the sinking of the Viribus Unitis in Pula
In Pola, one of the most memorable feats, to the detriment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by the precursors of the Italian Navy's special forces On a moonless night, between October 31 and November 1, 1918, one of the most memorable feats was accomplished by the precursors of the Navy's Special Forces. In that phase of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Navy, avoiding a head-on clash, preferred to keep its major units safe in the well-defended base of Pola. The Italian Navy then developed a daring plan to strike enemy ships directly in their ports, engaging in the development of insidious units such as,...
The minutes of the Italian National Council of Fiume (1918-1920)
In one of the last sessions of the Budapest Parliament in the tumultuous weeks that led to the implosion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the autumn of 1918 (imperial proclamation of federal reform of the Austrian portion of the Empire, collapse of the Piave and Salonika fronts, social and national revolts) the representative of Fiume Andrea Ossoinack appealed to the Wilsonian principle of self-determination of peoples for the capital of Carnaro, whose Italianness had to be recognized and respected. On 29 October the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs proclaimed itself, which gathered these components present within the Habsburg imperial structure: no State...
