Ciampi Honors Italy’s Independence at Solferino and Red Cross Memorial
The president’s first greeting is for the children of Solferino. As he steps out of the presidential car in the square in front of the oscillario of the town of Mantua, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi breaks the strict Quirinal ceremonial, cuts through the dense cordon of security personnel, and proceeds without hesitation towards a group of young children waving tricolor flags. It is 11:15 am. Solferino is a fortified town. Every access road is controlled. Even the manholes have been sealed.
Forty-two years after the visit of Giovanni Gronchi and Charles De Gaulle, a Head of State has returned to the site of the historic Risorgimento battle. Ciampi, accompanied by the Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, is greeted in Solferino by the mayor Luigi Lonardi, the president of the Province of Mantova Maurizio Fontanili, the prefect Sergio Ietto, Bishop Egidio Caporello, and a multitude of civil and military authorities.
Brief stop and tributes
The president’s stop on Mantuan soil is brief. Just enough time to lay a laurel wreath in the ossuary set up in the former Baroque church of San Pietro in Vincoli, and to spend a few minutes in silence to the sound of «Silence». No statements. The words will come later, in San Martino della Battaglia.
At the Solferino ossuary, Ciampi simply whispers a few words to the Bishop of Mantova. Monsignor Caporello later states that the president merely expressed his satisfaction for a long-cherished and finally fulfilled desire, that of visiting the sites of the decisive battle for the future of Italian unification and the process of our country’s independence.
Ciampi stays for six minutes at the ossuary to pay homage to the 28,000 fighters who, among dead and wounded, remained on the battlefield of June 24, 1859. The ossuary, established in 1870, houses the remains of 11,000 soldiers. When the president departs, he again breaks protocol. He surprises the drivers and the men of the State Police and walks along a short stretch of road from the Rocca ossuary to the town.
He does this to shake hands and exchange greetings. Thousands of people have come to Solferino. Then, from the Rocca of the ossuary, the short drive to the International Red Cross Memorial, built in 1959 for the centenary of the organization’s founding, with marbles from all over the world, begins.
Historical significance and celebrations
A brief but essential stop, because San Martino and Solferino are not only symbolic sites of Italy’s unification. Here, in fact, the Geneva-born Henry Dunant, upon observing the thousands of wounded lying on the battlefield, had the idea of creating an organization to provide aid and care, the International Red Cross.
The avenue leading to the Memorial is decorated festively. Alongside the tricolors, the flags of the Red Cross flutter from the window sills. Before noon, the presidential convoy, amid shouts of «hello, president!» and «long live Italy!», sets off again towards San Martino in Brescia province.
Ciampi looks out the window and waves. Mayor Lonardi is a happy man: «For Solferino—he says—it is a historic event».
