Articles

Gabriele D’Annunzio (Pescara 1863-Gardone Riviera, Brescia, 1938), a novelist, poet, drama writer and politician, took active part in the First World War. During the war, he made a long stay in Cervignano, near the headquarters of the Chief Commander of the Italian Third Army led by his friend Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, the duke of Aosta. This territory was actually the main base of D’Annunzio’s feats at war: the Battle of Timavo, the Flight over Vienna and the Endeavour of Fiume.

The Basilica of Aquileia, the custodian of a two thousand year long history and a trove of early-Christian art treasures,  was home to a solemn ceremony held in 1921 to honour the sacrifice of a great number of unknown soldiers who had died in the battlefields of the Karst nearby. During the ceremony, the coffin of one of them was chosen to be shipped to Rome and buried in the monument of the Altare della Patria. On this occasion, poet GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO produced the verses: “The Mother is calling: there starts a weeping, deep there starts a chant, a hymn praising the imperishable”. Behind the apse of the Basilica, the Cemetery of the Heroes is the burial ground of the first soldiers who died at war between 1915 and 1917 during the battles of the river Isonzo. To pay tribute to their sacrifice, poet GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO composed a psalm on 2nd November 1915, which is engraved on a plate hanging on the wall of the apse. In Aquileia, the poet also came to attend the funerals of his friend Major Giovanni Randaccio, the commander of the Brigade Lupi di Toscana, who died during the Battle of Timavo and was buried here. D’Annunzio composed the Latin epigraph written on his tombstone.