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  2. Patrimoine
  3. Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
  4. Rhône
  5. 69007 Lyon 8e Arrondissement

  6. Monument to the dead of the Italian community

Monument to the dead of the Italian community dans le Rhône

Rhône

Monument to the dead of the Italian community

    228 Avenue Berthelot
    69007 Lyon 8e Arrondissement
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Monument aux morts de la communauté italienne
Crédit photo : Romainbehar - Sous licence Creative Commons

Timeline

XIXe siècle
Époque contemporaine
1900
2000
30 janvier 1922
Perpetual grant of the military square
24 mai 1925
Opening of the monument
2019
Registration for historical monuments
28 décembre 2021
Classification as historical monuments
Aujourd'hui
Aujourd'hui

Heritage classified

The monument to the dead of the Italian community, at the cemetery of the Guillotière, with its podium, its masonry fence and the torches forming barredding, excluding the military square with the tombs, located on plot No. 16, section BZ of the cadastre, as shown in red on the plan annexed to the decree: classification by order of 28 December 2021

Key figures

Édouard Herriot - Mayor of Lyon Inaugurated the monument in 1925.
Vincenzo Pasquali - Italian sculptor Author of the marble statue.

Origin and history

The monument to the dead of the Italian community of Lyon is located in the new cemetery of the Guillotière. It was inaugurated on 24 May 1925 by Edward Herriot, then Mayor of Lyon, to honour the 144 Italian soldiers who died in Lyon hospitals during the First World War (1914-1918). The monument is the property of the Italian state, following a perpetual concession granted by the city of Lyon on 30 January 1922, including a military square of 81 tombs.

The work was carved by Vincenzo Pasquali, an Italian artist active in San Remo, who made the marble statue of Carrara representing the Great Madre (Mother Homeland) and a dying soldier. Weighing more than 12 tons, the sculpture adopts a late Liberty style, characteristic of Pasquali, which also signs monuments in Tuscany and Liguria. The monument is surrounded by a cast iron fence with flames and commemorative plaques.

The site, with an area of 300 m2, was granted to Italy for life. An inscription in Italian recalls that the monument was financed by the Italian colony of Lyon and the silky of Milan, highlighting the Franco-Italian alliance during the war. The monument was first listed in 2019 and then classified as historical monuments by order of 28 December 2021.

The adjacent military square includes the remains of the soldiers, initially dispersed before being grouped into a vault serving as a base for the monument. The set, framed by trees, combines commemorative and landscape dimension. Pasquali worked in parallel on another monument, dedicated to Commonwealth soldiers who died in the torpedo of Transylvania (1917), destroyed in 1936 by order of Mussolini. The Lyon monument was also the scene of political confrontations in 1926.

External links

Page Wikipedia
Page Monumentum