Italian Military Cemetery in Warsaw

We have a number of cemeteries in Warsaw, which make great tourist attractions. They are witness to the local history. They show the variety of religous variety of Warsaw inhabitants. They are open-air sculture galleries. They hold tombs of Polish artists, politicians and heroes. They make great parks too. Most of them are located in the Wola district, dating back to the end of 18^th century (for now you can check some of them on my Polish blog, here, here or here).



Due to our troubled history, the cemeteries are often populated with soldiers and civil victims of wars and struggles. There are some military cemetaries, including burial grounds specifically for foreign soldiers. A German or a Russian cemetary is not a surprise here. But Italian?
And yet. There’s an Italian military cemetary in Warsaw. 

 
It was founded at the initative of the Italian government to bury all the soldiers, whose war-time fate led them to these regions and who died in battles or as prisoners of war. This place which lay in the outskirts of the city back then, was turned into a cemetery. Materials like tombstones and metalwork elements of the fence were brought from Italy. A monumental gate in a form of a triumphal arch led to the premises. It was ofiicialy opened in 1926. 868 Italians found their final rest here. An old pre-war photo shows it here. 
In the twenties and thirties while the reltions between Poland and Italy were still favourable, the cemetery was a destination of official Italian visits. And so Dino Grandi (a member of Mussolini's government), or Galeazzo Ciano (Italian foreign affairs minister) were one of the „high-level” visitors of that period.

The cemetery didn’t suffer from the destruction that touched Warsaw, being located so far from the theatre of struggle. After the second World War its area was expanded in order to hold more recent burials. In 1957-67, 1415 Italian citizens who died in concentration camps or in prisoner of war camps were buried here.

 By 1970 the original gate had eroded so during renovation works it changed its shape: the triumph arch was replaced with a metalwork gate.

This is what the cemetary looks now (I took the pictures in June 2019). It’s open to public, but it doesn’t seem to be very much frequented. Even though it is now included whithin the city borders, you need to get almost to the northern edge of the city (easily accessible by tram, “Cmentarz Włoski” stop).
Most of its tombstones are uniform soldier’s graves. There are also a few individual tombstones.

 At its end of the main lane, there's a wall with the engraved writing:

"Italy for its fallen soldiers who rest in the Polish soil"

„Remember and consider our sarifice”

Beside there’s an altar with a cross with a monument saying „Pro Patria defuncti in terra fideli requiescunt" (Latin „Those who died for the Fatherland lie steadfast in this soil”) - not visble in the pictures here. There are also names of places where bodies were retrieved from.

 The cemetery continues to be taken care of by the Italian Embassy.