Il Camposanto dell'Aquila: dalla "laboriosa gestazione" alla storia della costruzione

The Monumental Cemetery of L'Aquila has had a particularly complex history, due to initial reluctance and opposition that lasted for over fifty years. After several projects and numerous changes of mind, its construction was only implemented after the unification of Italy, in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Since then the development was quite rapid, enough to be that it was expanded several times during the twentieth century. The Camposanto was imposed by law in every municipality, due to health needs determined by the spread of epidemics; in L’Aquila, initially only the victims of the infections were buried, then also the soldiers who died in the war (usually commemorated by monuments located elsewhere). The construction of the Cemetery was long disputed both for ideological and practical reasons, but after the controversial start it soon became a motive for different interests - from emotional, artistic and representative ones, to economic and speculative ones. Tracing -through archival documents and projects- the stages of this constructive history is useful to understand its first intentions, subsequent developments and the meanings that the place has assumed over time; beyond its specific function, it bears witness to two centuries that are particularly important for the formation of national identity and of that city itself in its more recent history. The Cemetery is in fact the representation of the society that built it and (implicitly) of the one that still continues to use it today; therefore, through his memories but also some inattentions, he expresses the image of the relationship between the city and its past.