The battle of Solferino on 24th June 1859, was the bloodiest of the Italian and Napoleonic wars of independence with over 10,000 dead on the field, 20,000 wounded and 11,400 soldiers were declared missing.
After the battle, mass graves were dug, in which the bodies of the fallen were quickly buried.
The aim was to prevent the decomposition of the corpses, accelerated by the summer heat, from causing serious problems to public health. These burials, however, were not decorous or regular.
The remains of over 10,000 soldiers were exhumed and placed in two pre-existing churches, one in Solferino and the other in San Martino della Battaglia, transformed into ossuaries.
The Solferino Ossuary is housed inside the church of San Pietro in Vincoli.
You can get there along an avenue of cypresses at the edge of which there is a large park. On the façade of the church, you can see two mosaics: one depicting St. Peter, and the other the Redeemer.
The apse space behind the simple altar and those of the crypt below and the two side chapels are completely covered with thousands of bones belonging to about 7000 Savoy, French and Austrian soldiers, now side by side without distinction of nationality or rank.
As can be read in one of the epigraphs: “Enemies in battle, in the silence of the tomb brothers rest”.
