Faces of stone and stories of life

October 26 marks the start of a series of meetings curated and promoted by the Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati and the Italian War History Museum dedicated to Trentino's irredentists on the centenary of their death. 7 weekly meetings are planned, during which the events of Irredentism in Trentino and the First World War will be rebuilt and reinterpreted.

One century after the capture, sentencing and execution of Cesare Battisti, Fabio Filzi and Damiano Chiesa, we can examine their lives and see the experience of a generation of irredentist volunteers and ask ourselves how the memory of those events might have shaped our city and country.

Today their "stone faces" represent them in the streets, schools and museums: evidence of a past celebration that exalted their heroic end with monuments and events that enjoyed wide public participation.

The last hundred years have allowed us a more detached historical reappraisal of the events closer to the experience of the protagonists. Thanks to contemporary historical research and increasingly extensive documentation, we will rediscover the people, families, social context and opinions which influenced their development and choices.

It will be a tale of many voices that help us to understand how much of their lives is contemporary and what belongs to the distant past.

The full programme of events:

26 October 2016 - 17.30
Alessio Quercioli
Volunteers for Italy: history, biographies and memories

2 November 2016 - 17.30
Alessio Quercioli, Fabrizio Rasera
Damiano Chiesa - A Student from Rovereto Grappling with History

9 November 2016 - 17.30
Fabrizio Rasera
Rovereto, the Adriatic, the Atlantic, the European War
The Adventures and Fates of the Filzi Brothers

16 November 2016 - 17.30
Mirko Saltori
Cesare Battisti, a Socialist Facing the War

23 November 2016 - 17.30
Diego Leoni
The "Last" Battisti: the soldier, his capture and his journey to the scaffold

30 November 2016 - 17.30
Gianluigi Fait, Diego Leoni
Stories of Other Executed Men: Gasperini, Gerola, Chizzali, Tonini

7 December 2016 - 17.30
Quinto Antonelli
The "Heroic Memory": monuments and the cult of the martyrs

The initiative is sponsored by the Provincia Autonoma di Trento, the Comune di Rovereto and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio Trento e Rovereto.

Information:

- Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati
Piazza Rosmini 5 - Rovereto
+39 0464 436663
www.agiati.it

- Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra - onlus
Via Castelbarco 7 - Rovereto
+39 0464 438100
www.museodellaguerra.it

Source: www.trentinograndeguerra.it