On Via Terraglio, beside the old church of San Lazzaro, a low building of the 1930s still carries in fading red paint one of the standard commemorative slogans of the Fascist ventennio. What the building originally was, we have not been able to establish.
At a glance
Beside a fenced sports court on Via Terraglio, in the San Lazzaro district on the southern edge of Treviso, stands a low tiled-roof building of the 1930s, rendered in cream, with a red-painted inscription still legible across its front wall:
RACCOGLIETE LO SPIRITO DEI NOSTRI INDIMENTICABILI MORTI E FATENE LO SPIRITO ARDENTE DELLA PATRIA IMMORTALE
(“Gather the spirit of our unforgettable dead, and make of it the ardent spirit of the immortal fatherland.”)
The building stands next to the old parish church of San Lazzaro, a fifteenth-century foundation that began as the chapel of the city’s lazaretto and was rebuilt in its present form between 1706 and 1726. A paper sign taped inside one upstairs window reads “Treviso Sailing Club”, a sailing association of this city. That tells us who uses a room in the building today, not what it originally was: we have not identified its original name, owner or function, nor found this inscription recorded in any published source — only that the wording itself was a standard formula of the period, repeated on more than one building across Italy.
Key facts
- Where: Via Terraglio, San Lazzaro, Treviso, beside the old church of San Lazzaro Vescovo
- What you see: a low 1930s building with a red inscription painted across its front, in a formula typical of Fascist-era war remembrance, beside a fenced sports court
- Next door: the old church of San Lazzaro Vescovo — a fifteenth-century lazaretto chapel, rebuilt 1706–1726, restored in 2011–2012; the parish moved to a new church built between 1979 and 1982
- Today: a window carries a paper sign for the Treviso Sailing Club
- Original function, architect, exact date: not established
- GPS: 45.65076, 12.24220 · Open in Google Maps
A slogan repeated across Italy
The inscription is not unique to this building. The same formula — raccogliete lo spirito dei nostri indimenticabili morti e fatene lo spirito ardente della Patria immortale — is recorded elsewhere in Italy as a wall inscription of the Fascist period, among the standard commemorative slogans painted on war memorials, dopolavoro buildings and sports facilities during the ventennio. It belongs to the rhetoric of remembrance for the dead of the First World War that the regime adopted and repeated on public buildings nationwide, rather than to a single speech or a single author tied to this particular wall.
What the building was is another matter, and we cannot answer it from a source. Its shape — a low hall with a sports ground attached, on the edge of a parish that was then a village outside the city walls — would fit a dopolavoro or a youth sports clubhouse of the 1930s, but we have found nothing that names it. The slogan survived where hundreds like it were whitewashed after 1945, which is itself worth noticing: it is on a side wall, above head height, facing a sports court rather than a street.
See it from the street
Do you know more?
We have not been able to identify this building: what it originally was, who built it, or when the inscription was painted. If you know San Lazzaro, or the sports ground on Via Terraglio, write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
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Getting there
San Lazzaro is on the southern edge of Treviso, along Via Terraglio, the old road between Treviso and Venice. The building stands beside the old church, with the sports court between them; city buses along the Terraglio stop a short walk away.
Sources
- The GPS position recorded in the photographs themselves: 45.650892, 12.242136 — Via Terraglio, San Lazzaro, Treviso, confirmed by reverse lookup on OSM Nominatim, 23 September 2026.
- Parrocchia di San Lazzaro Vescovo, Treviso, and the national census of Italian churches (chieseitaliane.chiesacattolica.it, record 64202) — on the old church: a fifteenth-century lazaretto chapel, rebuilt 1706–1726, restored 2011–2012, with the new parish church built 1979–1982.
- Wikiquote (Italian), “Slogan fascisti” — the same inscription recorded on a building in Asciano (Siena), evidence that the wording was a standard formula rather than unique to this wall.
- Luigi De Marchi, who photographed the building on 29 September 2024 and gave the street-view position.
Gallery
Photographs by Luigi De Marchi.
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See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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