Monumento ai Caduti

Baveno's Monumento ai Caduti turns a classical formula into something personal. Erected at the end of the First World War on the lakeside promenade, it pairs a Corinthian column with a bronze group of an elderly stonecutter bidding farewell to his son leaving for the front — in a quarrying town, a portrait of the community's own loss.

Why it matters

The official municipal inventory dates the monument to the close of the First World War and describes its two components: a Corinthian column rising from a base left partly unfinished, and the bronze group of the old scalpellino saluting his departing son. That combination is unusual. Italian war memorials typically use the winged victory or the fallen soldier; Baveno chose the generational handover inside a working family, rendered in bronze against local granite. The partly roughened base also reads as a deliberate nod to the stonecutter's craft, where unfinished blocks are part of the trade.

What to notice

The bronze group shows a father, a stonecutter from the picasass tradition, bidding farewell to his son. Their scene brings the town's craft and wartime loss together. The Corinthian column above gives the intimate scene a civic formality. Nearby memorials to the Second World War and to the stonecutter extend this public memory of Baveno's history.

Context and history

The monument was realised, according to the official municipal page, at the end of the First World War, when communities across Italy were commissioning memorials to their dead. Baveno's lakefront itself was newly built at that point — the embankment was started in 1913 and completed only in 1921, delayed by the war — so the memorial arrived on a promenade still taking shape, with a view that runs from the Borromean Islands across to Laveno. The town's contribution to the conflict cannot be separated from its economy: the granite quarries on Monte Camoscio and the surrounding slopes had made Baveno the best-known source of pink granite among the Graniti dei Laghi, and quarry families such as those named in the municipal granite history (Adami, Bernasconi, Cirla, Della Casa, Galli, Polli, Tamini) formed the social fabric the war torn apart.