Objects gathered from battlefields, preserved by veterans and their families, handed down through generations, and entrusted to municipal collections, museums, and memorials. Testimonies of the Risorgimento that have often reached us only in fragments, yet possess precise historical and moral significance. The bullet that struck a volunteer. A uniform pierced by gunfire at San Martino. Surgical instruments used to treat prominent leaders. Buttons torn from the uniform of an officer who fell at Custoza. A clod of earth from the site where a patriot was executed. Small, sometimes solemn fragments preserved from the very beginning as symbols of sacrifice, mourning, civic devotion, and national sentiment. Objects of diverse types and originsoften accompanied by inscriptions, scrolls, photographs, or memoirs that capture their significance. In them, material substance becomes memory, and memory becomes history. This volume brings together a selection of these Risorgimento relics and reconstructs their contexttangible traces of the men, battles, and ideals that contributed to the making of a united Italy.
Details
Italian text, paperback, numerous color illustrations. 94 pages.
