The Brindisi Monument to Fallen Sailors
Most small towns tend to look pretty much the same. That’s just as true for a small town in Southern Italy as it for a small town in any other part of the world. If you’re lucky most towns have a monument or a plaque in the town square. And if you’re really lucky you’ll chance upon the bust of someone famous. Although nine times out of ten that “famous” somebody just happens to be the person in the town that had enough money to afford a sculpture in their name.
So I think it’s pretty neat that the small Southern Adriatic Coastal town of Brindisi is well known (around these parts anyway) for not only one but TWO distinguished landmarks. One is Brindisi’s Roman column which sits at the end of the Appian Way (and which I’ve written about, so shame on you if you don’t read up on it) the other is the Monument to Fallen Sailors. A huge ship’s rudder that sits at the tip of the Bay of Brindisi and salutes the more than 6,000 fallen sailors who lost their lives during the First World War.
The city of Brindisi was chosen over two other potential locations – the port of Trieste in the north of Italy and the port of La Spezia in the West. To put this in perspective, picking Brindisi over Trieste and La Spezia is like picking Kansas City over Times Square as the site for Dick Clark’s “Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” celebration.
What Brindisi had going for it though, was it was a known commodity. During the early 1900’s, the port of Brindisi was well traveled. Passenger lines going from Egypt to the Orient and even New York were not uncommon. Not too mention ferryboats that traveled back and forth to Brindisi to Greece and Turkey. Nothing like having a built-in audience.
With nothing more than idea to have “some kind of tower” the proposed monument took its first steps in the form of a National Contest – opened to many of Italy and Europe’s leading architects and sculptors. Ninety-two submissions were the result – showcasing every imaginable idea and form. At contest’s end Luigi Brunati and Amerigo Bartoli won for their imaginative disign of a huge ship’s rudder on which the patron saint of ships would rest on top overlooking the bay.
A budget of nearly $300,000 dollars (1.200.000 Italian lire) was raised by the Italian Navy League and in short order, the work began.
The Rudder stands 53 meters high and is built from tuffa-stone, the typical stone that is hoisted from local quarries and is the foundation for virtually every historic building from Brindisi to the nearby city of Lecce. At the base the base of the monument sits a chapel constructed of black marble. Inside this sacred place are engraved the names of the 6.000 Italian sailors that fell during World War I and to whose memory the monument was dedicated.
Inside a narrow winding stairway leads from bottom to the very top. Where an eternal flame is forever lit. On the surrounding 27 meter deck sit twin cannons and anchors of the Austro-Ungarian battleships “Tegethoff” and ” Viribus Unitis” sunk by the Italians in 1918. A more recent plaque commemorates the memory of nearly 33,000 other sailors who paid the ultimate sacrifice for conflicts lasting from the Second World War up until the present.
And just like the builders promised, the Patron Saint of Sailors sits on top overlooking the bay and its outstretched arms to the Adriatic Sea beyond.
It was an inspired project from the very beginning. The work to construct the monument went smoothly and lasted only a year from October 28, 1932 and wrapping on October 29, 1933.
The inauguration of the monument was held on November 4, 1933. Present was King Emanuele III and hundreds of visiting dignitaries from military and political arenas, not too mention thousands of on-lookers from the local area. In other words, the event was a standing-room only event. The bay between Brindisi and Casale’ (the small town on the other side of the bay where the monument sits) was packed with ships of all sizes. There were fireworks and music and it all made for a memorable event.
Fast-forward to 2006. The Monument to Fallen Sailors continues to welcome ships arriving from Greece and Turkey. Each new generation is a little more removed from the significance of the monument’s construction, but it continues to hold a special place in the hearts of sailors who conduct an annual remembrance ceremony in the small chapel that sits at the rudder’s base.
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