Twenty-seven names, cut in stone to the right of the church door in 1922. The parish put them up itself, and wrote at the foot of the list the three words that explain why.
At a glance
A slab of white marble set into the brick front of the church of San Martino, in Campo San Martino, Castello. The frame is Istrian stone; four roundels of dark red marble mark the corners, with bronze plaques behind them and a bronze cross on the roundel at the top. The dedication runs across the head of the stone, the names below it in two columns, each with the man’s rank. The memorial was put up in 1922, four years after the armistice.
Key facts
- Designed by: the engineer Francesco Gusso, who presented the project to the city’s Commissione d’Ornato on 3 August 1922
- Installed: 1922
- Materials: marble slab, Istrian stone frame, four roundels of dark red marble, bronze plaques and cross
- Dedication: La parrocchia di S. Martino ai suoi figli caduti nella guerra 1915–18
- Names: 27 men, with rank, in two columns, closing with A perenne ricordo
- Where: on the main front of the church, to the right of the main door, Campo San Martino, Castello
- GPS: 45.43476, 12.34886 · Open in Google Maps
History
The paperwork survives and it is worth reading, because it shows how one of these stones actually came about. On 3 August 1922 the engineer Francesco Gusso brought the design before the Commissione d’Ornato, the city body that had to approve anything fixed to a building in Venice, and asked for permission to install it. On 12 November of the same year Sebastiano Bonomi asked the municipality for leave to fence off the working area in front of the church. Between those two dates the stone was cut and the names were set.
The parish of San Martino is small, hemmed in between the Arsenale and the canals of eastern Castello, and it lost twenty-seven men. They are listed by rank as well as name, so the stone records a sergeant beside a private and gives each his own line. There is no unit, no date of death, no place: only the name, the rank, and the fact of it.
What you see
The wall it is fixed to is bare brick, patched and re-laid over centuries, and the memorial sits on it like a page laid on a table. The contrast is the whole effect: the brick is rough and warm, the marble is flat and cold, and the Istrian frame holds the one against the other. The dark roundels read at a distance as four full stops at the corners of the text. On the ground below, the campo is ordinary and usually empty, and nothing directs you to look up.
Nearby
- The Church of San Martino di Castello — the church the stone is fixed to, rebuilt to a design of Jacopo Sansovino
- Ponte de l’Arsenal o del Paradiso — a minute away, at the gate of the Arsenale
Sources
- Pietre della Memoria, Lapide ai Caduti della parrocchia di San Martino (Venezia) nella Grande Guerra, census record 177032, compiled by Jonathan Glixon — pietredellamemoria.it: the designer, the 1922 dates, the materials, the position on the church front, the dedication and the count of names
- The memorial itself, read from the contributed photograph
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →📷 Become a Cultural Heritage Online photographer
Share your photos of places: they stay published under your name as the author. The more they're seen, the more you get noticed — and soon a contest will reward the most appreciated photos.
Log in or sign up free to add a photoIs this page about you?
This page is read by travellers and heritage enthusiasts who find it on Google. Tell us how you are connected to this place and we will take it from there.