A low building beside a fenced sports court on the edge of the Marano lagoon still carries, in fading red paint, one of the standard commemorative slogans of the Fascist ventennio — the same words found on similar buildings elsewhere in Italy. What the building originally was, we have not been able to establish.
At a glance
Beside a fenced sports court near Marano Lagunare, on the Friuli coast between Grado and the mouth of the Isonzo, 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.”)
A paper sign taped inside one upstairs window today reads “Treviso Sailing Club” — a sailing association based in the city of Treviso, some 100 km away, that evidently uses this building or a room in it for its own activity on the lagoon. The sign tells us who uses the building today, not what it originally was: we have not identified its original name, owner, or function, nor found this specific inscription documented in any published source — only that the wording itself was a standard commemorative formula of the period, repeated on more than one building across Italy.
Key facts
- Where: near Marano Lagunare, Udine, on the Friuli lagoon coast
- What you see: a 1930s low building with a painted red inscription across its front, in a formula typical of Fascist-era war memorials, beside a fenced sports court
- Today: a window carries a paper sign for the Treviso Sailing Club, a sailing association based in Treviso city
- Original function, architect, exact date: not established
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, catalogued 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 First World War dead that the Fascist regime adopted and repeated on public buildings nationwide, rather than to a single speech or a single author tied to this particular building.
We have not found a source that names this building, its original owner, or the date the inscription was painted. Marano Lagunare itself was a fishing village under Venetian rule until the eighteenth century and passed to Italy only after the First World War, when this stretch of the Friuli coast became a border region; a building of this kind, on the edge of a lagoon settlement with a sports ground attached, would fit the pattern of a dopolavoro or youth sports clubhouse built during the following two decades, but we cannot confirm that without a source naming it.
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 this stretch of the Marano lagoon, or the sailing club that uses the building today, write to Sofia, who looks after these pages.
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Getting there
Marano Lagunare is on the Friuli coast between Grado and the mouth of the Isonzo, reached by car via the SP12 from Latisana or Palazzolo dello Stella. The building stands on the edge of the town, beside a fenced sports court.
Sources
- Wikiquote (Italian), “Slogan fascisti” — recording the same inscription on a building in Asciano (Siena), evidence that the wording was a standard formula rather than unique to any one building.
- Treviso Sailing Club (trevisosailingclub.com) — on the association’s base in Treviso and its sailing activity on the Adriatic; the club is not otherwise linked to this building in any published source.
- Luigi De Marchi, who photographed the building and recorded its GPS position.
Gallery
Photograph 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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