Tower of San Martino della Battaglia

In 1878, a high tower was built in neo-Gothic style on the hill of San Martino, not far from the Ossuary, which was intended to celebrate the events of the Italian Risorgimento. Its designers were the architect Frizzoni from Bergamo and the engineers Luigi Fattori from Solferino, Monterumici from Treviso and Cavalieri from Bologna.
You climb to the top of the tower, 74 meters high, along a spiral inclined ramp. In the entrance there is the bronze statue of Vittorio Emanuele II by the sculptor Dal Zotto.
The walls are painted by the painter Vittorio Bressanin from Venice. Going up the large ramp you gradually reach rooms arranged one above the other and dedicated to some episodes of the Risorgimento wars. The frescoes in the tower are a very interesting example of Risorgimento-themed painting which stylistically connects with the historical-romantic pictorial current of which Hayez and Gerolamo and Domenico Induno were the best-known representatives.
While in them the anecdotal aspect prevails or the portrait-psychological commitment or the romantic taste of the re-enactment of a folkloristic or picturesque past, in the frescoes of the Tower of San Martino the emphasis and the epic-celebratory descriptivism which characterizes much of of the official painting and sculpture of Umberto Italy, which found its greatest celebration in the Altare della Patria (1885-1911) decorated with high reliefs by a Garda sculptor, Angelo Zanelli of San Felice.
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