Monumento ai Caduti d'Italia

On Piazza Santa Teresa in Brindisi, a winged Victory of white Carrara marble carries the smaller figure of the Fatherland above a memorial to the city's fallen of the First World War. The sculptor Edgardo Simone, born in Brindisi, created the monument, inaugurated in 1931 and moved twice before reaching its present square in 1940.

Why it matters

The monument commemorates about five hundred men of Brindisi who died in the First World War. Its sculptor, Edgardo Simone, made the work without payment for his hometown and later pursued a career in the United States, including work as a film set designer. The memorial's own history also reflects the changing plan of Brindisi's public spaces in the 1930s: inaugurated on the seafront in 1931, it was moved through Piazza Vittoria before its definitive placement on Piazza Santa Teresa in 1940.

What to notice

The monument combines a base of red marble from Verona with white Carrara figures. At the summit, a winged Victory carries the figure of the Fatherland. Below are allegorical groups depicting a mother arming her son and a mother mourning her fallen child. Inscriptions on the rear record major battles of the war. The monument's first setting also included masks and shields that are no longer present.

Context and history

The city administration commissioned the work in the mid-1920s. Simone offered to design and execute it without payment, in gratitude for a scholarship the city had granted him. King Vittorio Emanuele III inaugurated the monument on 22 November 1931 in the square of Engelberto Dionisi on the Regina Margherita seafront. Simone objected to that location as too peripheral. After an interim placement in Piazza Vittoria, the monument was moved in 1940 to Piazza Santa Teresa, then called Piazza dell'Impero. A conservation campaign was completed in June 2018.