Monumento a Pietro Cossa

Roma Segreta credits the bronze to Adolfo Sanguinetti, cast at the Bastianelli works at San Michele a Ripa, on a pedestal by the architect Bernich, and reports that it was unveiled on 27 September 1895 in what was then piazza S. Elena, today Largo Arenula. The same source reports that the works joining via Arenula to corso Vittorio Emanuele II in the 1920s displaced it, that it was stored inside the Aurelian bastion between Porta San Paolo and Porta San Sebastiano, and that it was moved to piazza della Libertà only in 1962. Pietro Cossa was a Roman dramatist of anticlerical sympathies; his plays include Nerone, Messalina, Giuliano l'Apostata and Cola di Rienzo.