Monumento ai Caduti, Santarcangelo di Romagna: the mother, the bride and the shield

Santarcangelo di Romagna, Emilia-Romagna · modelled 1925 · unveiled 4 November 1928

At a glance

In the middle of Piazza Ganganelli, on seven steps, a fluted stone stele carries a bronze group: two women holding up the body of a dead soldier. He is naked and they are draped; one takes him under the arms, the other carries his legs, and between them the cloak hangs like the shield a Spartan mother handed her son with the words either with this or upon this. The town commissioned it in the years after the First World War from a sculptor who had done the same work for Rimini, and it took six years to get from the committee to the unveiling.

Key facts

• Where: Piazza Ganganelli, Santarcangelo di Romagna (Rimini)
• Sculptor: Bernardino Boifava (Ghedi 1888 – Forlì 1953), who also worked on the war memorial of Rimini
• Modelled in 1925; unveiled on 4 November 1928
• Bronze group on a stele of travertine and sandstone with fluted half-columns, on a base of seven steps; about 3 metres high
• Subject: the mother and the bride holding the dead soldier on his shield
• National catalogue of historic and artistic property, record 0800577529
• Coordinates: 44.06315, 12.44652

What you see

The stele is the surprise. It is not a plain pedestal but a fragment of architecture — a fluted shaft with a battered capital, set against a squared block, the whole thing weathered to the colour of the pavement. The bronze above it is dark green and reads differently from each side: from the square you see the soldier’s legs hanging clear of the drapery and one bare foot pointing down; from behind, the women close around him and the group becomes a single mass of cloth.

There is nothing triumphant in it. The soldier is dead and being carried, not raised; the women are not allegories with attributes but two figures doing the work of lifting a body. That reading of the shield — come back with it or on it — was the classical formula the years around 1925 reached for, and the national catalogue records the monument among the works whose language belongs to that period.

A small bronze plate at the foot of the base gives the essentials: Monumento ai Caduti, 1925. Realizzato dallo scultore forlivese Bernardino Boifava a ricordo dei caduti della prima guerra mondiale.

Photographs

Practical information

• In the open square, free, at any hour. The steps are the town’s meeting place and people sit on them.
• The Arco Ganganelli stands at the far end of the same square, the town hall behind the monument, and the hill town begins beyond them.

Sources

• Catalogo generale dei Beni Culturali, record 0800577529 — war memorial, Piazza Ganganelli, Santarcangelo di Romagna; Bernardino Boifava (1888–1953); executed 1925, inaugurated 4 November 1928; bronze group, travertine and sandstone stele with fluted half-columns, seven-step base, height 300 cm; the mother and the bride supporting the dead soldier
• The bronze plate at the foot of the monument, transcribed from the photograph, 1 November 2025

Record researched and written by Luigi De Marchi for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.

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