TOLLING FOR PEACE FROM ROVERETO TO CIOCIARIA
On two hilltops far apart, two bells tell the same story. One overlooks the Vallagarina valley from Colle di Miravalle (Miravalle Hill) in Rovereto, the other looks over Ciociaria from the Rocca di San Pietro in Castro dei Volsci. Two different landscapes - the Amaseno and Liri valleys on one side, the Adige valley on the other - but the same question: how to transform the wound of the war into a shared memory?
In Rovereto, that question took shape in the Campana dei Caduti, Maria Dolens, cast from the bronze of World War I cannons at the behest of Don Antonio Rossaro. Every evening, its one hundred chimes ring out across the valley like a call to the conscience of nations.
In Castro dei Volsci, the sign left by memory is more recent and more intimate. A Bell with the word "peace" engraved on its mantle in several languages was set high on the village's panoramic lookout point in 2004. This one is not made from cannons, but it does originate from the same need: to let memory have its say.
The two bells share a similar symbolic origin. The bronze of Maria Dolens represents the weapons that had devastated Europe, the bell of Castro dei Volsci carries with it the languages of the peoples involved in the war - Italian, British, French, German, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Japanese - as if its mantle wanted to translate memory into a universal language. In both cases that metal alloy is not only matter: it has become a public voice.
The difference lies in the starting point of the memory it embodies. In Rovereto, the Bell was made to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the Great War. In Castro dei Volsci, the narrative was prompted by another wound: the one inflicted on civilians, and particularly on the women of Ciociaria in the latter months of World War II, when the Cassino Front and the Gustav Line turned these valleys into an area of devastation and violence.
For this reason, on the belvedere, the bell does not stand alone. In front of it is the Monument to the Mother of Ciociaria, a sculpture in Carrara marble by sculptor Felice Andreani, inaugurated on 3 June, 1964. The work depicts a mother shielding her daughter with her own body.
It is a simple, stark image, recalling the violence suffered by many women of Ciociaria during the advance of the armies in 1944 and it transforms that pain into a public act of remembrance.
In Rovereto near the bell there is a contemporary pietà, and in the pages of the column "For Whom the Bell Tolls," which we published throughout the centennial year, the story of civilian victims frequently reappears alongside that of the soldiers involved. It is a difference of form rather than substance: in Castro memory takes shape in the marble statue of a mother defending her daughter, in Rovereto it is entrusted to the sound of a bell calling people to remember past events.
The Ciociarian monument was created as the outcome of a collective decision. In 1964, the local community chose to put a public face on the tragedy of the so-called "marocchinate" - the violence inflicted on the population during the war. The history of the Campana dei Caduti also bears the mark of a choice made by the community: in Rovereto, the project was inspired by a desire to transform the memory of the conflict into a gesture of international reconciliation. In both cases, remembrance is not merely entrusted to a commemorative memorial. It becomes a journey.
On the Colle di Miravalle (Miravalle Hill), visitors listen to the bell tolling in the evening and immerse themselves in a place created to host people coming together. On the Castro dei Volsci panoramic lookout, the journey is almost physical: climbing up toward the Rocca, visitors first encounter the statue of the mother and then the bell.
It is a sequence reminiscent, on a smaller scale, of the same principle that guides the experience in Rovereto: first the memory of war, then the commitment to Peace.
Maria Dolens tolls every night to remind us that Peace cannot be taken for granted. The Castro dei Volsci bell does not follow the same daily ritual, but its presence next to the Mother of Ciociaria has a similar effect. Those who reach that viewpoint understand that Peace does not arise from oblivion, but from the ability to look history in the face.
From our perspective, places like these form a kind of moral geography. The bell of Rovereto tolls not only for itself, but for all places where memory seeks a public form. Castro dei Volsci is one such point on the map: a balcony over Ciociaria that speaks the same language as the Colle di Miravalle (Miravalle Hill).
Together, the marble mother and the bronze bell tell a story that Maria Dolens repeats every night with its tolling: Peace is not a motionless monument, but an ongoing work of memory.
Therefore, although the two bells originated in different contexts, they seem to respond to each other from a distance. One bears in its bronze the memory of war, the other guards the silence of a civilian tragedy. Yet both turn memory into an appeal.
And, ultimately, this is the same, deeper meaning also found throughout these pages: every bell that reminds us of war becomes, at the same time, a promise of Peace.
Image of the Peace Bell in Castro dei Volsci
Image of the Monument to the Mother of Ciociaria
