St. Elias Hill

The Colle di Sant’Elia (St. Elia’s Hill) is a hill opposite the Redipuglia Memorial and housed the Cemetery of the Undefeated of the Third Army, the first monumental shrine of the First World War. Conceived as early as 1919 by the Military War Memorial Office, the work was inaugurated in 1923 and housed the remains of 30,000 fallen soldiers in the area. With the inauguration of the Redipuglia Shrine in 1938, the Cemetery of the Undefeated was stripped of its functions and converted into a Park of Remembrance.
The initial project was by Colonel Vincenzo Paladini who, inspired by theidea of Dante’s Purgatory, designed a cemetery formed by seven concentric sectors that reached from the base to the top. At the top, an esplanade was created with a votive chapel and an obelisk in the shape of a lighthouse where the long avenues through the cemetery ended. In front of the hill, Mount Sei Busi and the entire IsonzoKarst line, where thousands of soldiers lost their lives, was clearly visible. This structure had a strong emotional impact on the visitor. The hill was then rendered even more evocative by the arrangement of the burials, which was intended to reproduce the randomness of death. Instead of crosses, war materials found around Mount Sei Busi were placed, accompanied by epigraphs with a poetic tone. The intention was not to forget how, during the war, tombs were built with material found on the battlefields.
In the following years, however, due to the climatic conditions, many of the finds used for the tombs began to be seriously damaged. This led to some restoration work that was stopped when the Redipuglia Memorial was planned in 1936 at the behest of the fascist regime, which intended to create a monumental work to celebrate the fallen of the Great War. The 30,000 corpses were thus moved and the Cemetery of the Undefeated lost its original function.

At the end of World War II, the Sant’Elia Hill was converted into a Park of Remembrance. Today it consists of a large stepped avenue on which reproductions of the original relics and epigraphs are arranged. On the summit there is no longer a chapel and obelisk, but a Roman column from Aquileia commemorating the fallen of all wars.

INFORMATION
Via III Armata (in front of the Redipuglia Memorial )
I-34070 Fogliano Redipuglia (GO)
Tel. +39 0481 489024Timetable hours
Always open

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Sentieri di Pace -IAT Fogliano Redipuglia
Via III Armata, 37
I-34070 Fogliano Redipuglia (GO)
Tel. +39 0481 489139
Cell. +39 346 1761913
info@prolocofoglianoredipuglia.it