Italian Great War Museums #5: a new layout for the "Museo della Battaglia" in Vittorio Veneto

Vittorio Veneto gave the name to the last battle of the First World War in Italy. And in this town located in the Treviso province a visitor can find one of the most relevant Great War Museums, at least nominally. New works of renovation of the layout started in 2012 and now the facility is almost ready. One of the peculiarities of its collection is for sure the big amount of documents, dispatches, posters in several languages along with the hall dedicated to the Italian spying activities in this city during the twelve months of the Austro-Hungarian occupation. Another flagship is the collection of photos and stereographies realized by Luigi Mazzocchi, one of the operators of the Italian Supreme Command.

Last May 10, during the preview of the new setting-up of the Museum of the Vittorio Veneto Battle, Col. Lorenzo Cadeddu of the Centro Studi Storico Militari sulla Grande Guerra “Piero Pieri” with its con l’Archivio della Memoria sulla Grande Guerra presented the casualties' census referred to the province of Treviso as well the research, analysis and digitization the Centro carried out in collaboration with the Association WW1 - dentro la Grande Guerra.

WW1 soldiers are men who leave their houses to go and fight at risk of their own lives. Those who survive the war often come back home suffering from pain or illness.

Walking a mile in those people’s shoes means not only getting aware of soldiers’ living in wartime, but also of their being simple men, sons, husbands, fathers far away from their birthplace. It is not an epic story, on the contrary, the human story of each family who had a grandfather, a great-grandfather or a loved one involved in that war.

To produce the scientific census on WW1 Italian casualties it was needed going through sources such as the "Albo d'Oro", the Official Military Report on the war and the municipalities' general registers to rediscover the story of each of them.

Today the technological tools also help us to organize hundreds thousands data from that period, to compare them with information from other sources and to apply data mining strategies to get combined and new results from research.
Both the Associations aim to spread all over Italy a historical and cultural heritage which is a public value and to provide everyone  - from citizens to fans, from students to researchers, with useful cultural tools.


Info:
www.museobattaglia.it