Cemetery of Heroes

The small and evocative Military Cemetery of the Fallen of Aquileia (Udine) develops behind the bell tower and around the apse of the historic Basilica of the city. There are collected 214 bodies of the first fallen in 1915, arranged in individual tombs, some surmounted by artistic stone monuments and iron and bronze crosses.
At the height of the apse, in a large stone sarcophagus, designed by the architect Guido Cirilli, the bodies of 10 of the 11 Unknowns are kept which, collected on the various battlefields, were exhibited in the central nave of the Basilica. One of them, indicated at random by Mrs. Maria Bergamas, mother of a missing soldier, was then solemnly brought to Rome to be kept in the Altare della Patria as a symbol of the fallen of all wars. An epigraph taken from a speech by the Duke of Aosta, Commander of the 3rd Army, was placed on the sarcophagus of the ten Unknowns.
The body of Mrs. Bergamas, who died in Trieste in 1953, is buried at the base of the monument, with the epigraph: «Maria Bergamas for all the mothers of Italy».
Among the tombs of the fallen is the stone ark which houses the body of Major Gold Medal of the 77th Infantry Giovanni Randaccio, who fell in the attack on Fonti del Timavo on 28 May 1917. On the sides, among the cypresses in the background , two valuable sculptures dedicated to all the Fallen: 'La Pietà' by the artist Ettore Ximenes, and the 'Sacrifice' by Edmondo Furlan.
The Aquileia Cemetery was created by the General Commissariat of Honors for the War Fallen on land owned by the Church of Aquileia.

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