A parish roll of honour that took two years and 150 lire to make, and that was reopened forty-two years later to take in the dead of a second war.
At a glance
A marble slab set in a dark frame on a house front near the church of San Silvestro, in the sestiere of San Polo. Two bronze roundels flank the inscription: a winged figure on the left, a steel helmet among oak leaves and weapons on the right. Between them the parish of San Silvestro honours its dead of 1915–1918 by name, in six close-set lines, with five men listed separately as missing. A second inscription, cut at the foot of the same stone in 1964, adds the dead of 1940–1945 without naming them.
Key facts
- Sculptor: Marcello Bonivento, a local Venetian artist
- Commissioned: requested in 1920, design approved in 1921, finished in March 1922 at a cost of 150 lire
- Unveiled: November 1922 — the month is cut into the stone at the lower right, XI MCMXXII
- Second inscription: 4 November 1964, for the dead of the Second World War
- Materials: marble slab, dark stone frame, two bronze roundels
- Location: Rio Terà San Silvestro, San Polo 1094, on the front of a private building now used by the parish
- GPS: 45.43754, 12.33343 · Open in Google Maps
History
The parish asked for a memorial in 1920, while the lists of the missing were still being settled. The design was approved the following year and the finished stone was delivered in March 1922, at a cost of 150 lire — a modest sum even then, and a reminder that most of these parish monuments were paid for by the people whose names they carry, not by the state. The unveiling followed in November 1922, the month cut into the lower right corner of the slab.
What makes this stone worth reading closely is the way it was used twice. The original dedication is unambiguous and of its time: La parrocchia di S. Silvestro Pp. ai suoi gloriosi eroi che della vita fecero olocausto all’Italia — the parish of San Silvestro to its glorious heroes, who made of their lives a burnt offering to Italy. Beneath it, in six lines of small capitals, come the names: Andriollo, Bajo, Beccegato, Bellotto, Benzoni, Bevilacqua, Bonivento, Bruna, Busetto, and on to Zabotto, some forty-five in all, arranged alphabetically with no rank and no regiment. A short line marked Dispersi lists five more men whose bodies were never found.
On 4 November 1964 the parish came back to the same stone rather than raising a new one. The lines added at the foot — uniti nel ricordo e nella gloria onoriamo tutti i caduti della guerra, MCMXL–MCMXLV — cover the Second World War without listing a single name. The rhetoric has cooled by forty-two years; where the first inscription speaks of heroes and sacrifice to the nation, the second simply says that all the war dead are honoured together.
What you see
The frame is bronze, and it has aged the way bronze does on a damp wall: green runs from the two roundels down across the marble in long streaks, in places crossing the names. The roundel on the left holds a winged figure, the one on the right a steel helmet laid over crossed weapons and oak leaves — the standard vocabulary of Italian memorials of 1922, executed here at the scale of a single parish rather than a city.
Nearby
- Campo San Giacomo di Rialto — five minutes north, towards the market
- War Memorial of the Frari–San Polo Parish — the neighbouring parish, its roll of honour on the wall of the State Archives
Sources
- Pietre della Memoria, Lapide ai Caduti della parrocchia di San Silvestro – Venezia (census record 177049, compiled by Jonathan Glixon) — pietredellamemoria.it: the sculptor Marcello Bonivento, the 1920 request and 1921 approval, completion in March 1922 for 150 lire, the November 1922 unveiling, the materials and the street address
- The monument itself, read from the contributed photograph: the full dedication, the roll of names, the Dispersi line, and the 1964 addition dated IV–XI–MCMLXIV
Find it on the map
See this place and what’s around it →Record researched and written by Carla Szathvary for Cultural Heritage Online, 2026.
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