Place of Worship
Cappella Espiatoria
included
The Chapel stands on the spot where on 29 July 1900 the anarchist Gaetano Bresci killed King Umberto I of Savoy at the end of a sporting event. The heir and successor Victor Emmanuel III commissioned the architect Giuseppe Sacconi, author of the Altare della Patria in Rome, to design a memorial building rich in symbolic elements, which was inaugurated in 1910. Above the column is a bronze Pietà, large alabaster crosses and the symbols of the kingdom, including the sceptre and crown. In the base of the column is a chapel decorated with mosaics, while underneath is a crypt in which a black marble memorial stone marks the spot of the attack. The project was probably approved by Queen Margaret. Indeed, the decorative apparatus does not lack the daisy motif, her hallmark. The same motif is repeated in the large gate by Alessandro Mazzucotelli, an internationally renowned 'ornamental blacksmith', which delimits the area.
The images of the Expiatory Chapel on this page are credited to: © Maurizio Montagna - Regional Directorate Museums Lombardy.
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