Monument to the Lupi di Toscana

Mount Ermada and the locality of San Giovanni di Duino, where the Timavo springs rise, were crucial places during the Great War on the Karst.

Here, along the state road SS14, stands the monument to the “Lupi di Toscana”, dedicated to the 77th and 78th Infantry Regiments, that is, the Tuscany Brigade. It lies only a few kilometres from Mount Ermada, the southernmost point of the Karst front, where this brigade arrived in the spring of 1917 to support the “Trapani” brigade in the attempt to cross the Timavo during the Tenth Battle of the Isonzo.

The brigade is represented by two bronze wolves placed on top of a boulder: the first howls towards Mount Ermada, whose conquest was the aim of the battle, while the second looks downward as if watching the enemy. Next to the monument stands the marker dedicated to Major Giovanni Randaccio, commander of the 77th Regiment, who died during the Tenth Battle and is buried in the Heroes’ Cemetery in Aquileia.

On the side of the rock, below the two wolves, are the opening lines of the Aeneid, engraved in 1930 by architect Arduino Berlam on the occasion of the bimillennium of Virgil’s birth, the poet who sang of the mouths of the Timavo.