Memorial to the Martyrs of the Fascist Revolution

Brief Information

The memorial is arranged not as an ordinary funerary group, but as a huge hypogeum, an underground temple. It was opened on October 28, 1932, on the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome, and the bodies of 53 people, described as having fallen for the cause of the Fascist revolution, were transferred there. For this reason, the place is important not only as a burial site: its underground form itself turns memory into an almost cultic space.

It is located in the Chiostro VI sector of the monumental Certosa di Bologna cemetery, next to the ossuary for those fallen in the Great War. This proximity changes the reading of the memorial: the Fascist necropolis is placed within an already existing cemetery language of military remembrance, while the inscription at the entrance states directly that Bologna “gathers” the fallen here and will honor them forever.

What to notice first

It is worth comparing three elements: the underground volume of the hypogeum, the altar of the fallen, and the entrance inscription. The hypogeum creates not a horizontal but a descending image of memory; the altar occupies the central position inside and turns the burial into the form of a shrine; the inscription at the entrance explains in advance whom and how this place asks us to remember.

The material also serves this design. Granite from Siena emphasizes the weight and durability of the structure, while reliefs with allegories of Strength and Glory add a language of political heroization to its cemetery function. The nearby ossuary for those fallen in the Great War is also mentioned: against this background, the memorial reads as an attempt to incorporate the Fascist dead into a broader pantheon of military remembrance.