Villa Glori (Parco della Rimembranza)

Some seventy volunteers crossed into papal territory on 20 October 1867 and entrenched themselves in a vineyard on Monte Cacciarello, where the papal zouaves overran them during the night of 22 to 23 October. Enrico Cairoli died there and his brother Giovanni, gravely wounded, died soon after. The vineyard belonged to Vincenzo Glori, whose name the hill kept, and Cesare Pascarella made the episode into twenty-five Romanesco sonnets published in 1886. The master plan of 1883 first proposed a large green space here and expropriation began; the monument to the fallen of 1867, an antique Pietrasanta marble column on a rustic travertine base, was inaugurated in 1895; the Comune repossessed part of the park in 1905; and by a resolution of 23 October 1923 the area was made a Parco della Rimembranza for the dead of the First World War. Raffaele de Vico designed it in eight months and the park opened on 18 May 1924. At piazzale del Mandorlo stand the monument to the Cairoli brothers, the brick structure that held a dry branch of the almond tree under which Enrico Cairoli died, and a cippus to servicemen who died in peacetime; viale dei Settanta is named for the men of the 1867 fight, and a plaque to the carabinieri killed at Nassiriya stands behind Paolo Canevari's Uomo Erba. Three wooden pavilions built in 1929 for a summer colony survive. Between 1997 and 2000 the Comune installed works by contemporary artists: Dompe, Mattiacci, Mochetti, Caruso, Castagna, Kounellis, Nunzio and Staccioli in 1997, Uncini and Canevari in 2000.