Park of Remembrance of Perteole

The Park of Remembrance in Perteole is a place of memory created in 1995 by the citizens and municipal administration of Ruda.

It is a small green space where a large white cross in Karst stone dating from 1915 and 25 iron crosses have been placed in memory of those who fell in the First and Second World Wars.

The park stands on the remains of what was once a military cemetery from 1915. Like many settlements on the Friulian plain not far from the Isonzo Karst, Ruda became one of the logistical centres of the Italian rear area. Sorting and rest centres for soldiers, command posts and military hospitals were installed in the village, tasked with treating the wounded from the front. The military authorities also had to create burial grounds because of the large number of deaths caused by severe wounds and poor hygiene.

In this case the first burials were made as early as the summer of 1915 behind the medieval church of Sant’Andrea in Perteole. The cemetery, which was meant to serve throughout the war, was already abandoned by the end of that year because it ran out of space: a cholera epidemic caused a dramatic rise in deaths, and by then there were already 559 graves, including 26 Austro-Hungarian ones. The cemetery was later neglected and was officially closed in 1935, when all the remains were transferred to the Redipuglia Shrine.