Dogali Obelisk: A War Memorial in Rome
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Bronze Age
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Bronze Age, Classical, Modern
- Civilizations
- Egyptian, Italian, Roman
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Monument
On this page7 sections
History
The Dogali obelisk is a war memorial in Rome, Italy, created in 1887 in modern Italy around an ancient Egyptian obelisk carved during the reign of Ramesses II. It commemorates the Italian soldiers killed at the Battle of Dogali near Massaua, in present-day Eritrea, on 26 January 1887 during the Eritrean War, an Italian colonial conflict. The Italian column, numbering 500 men and led by Lieutenant Colonel Tommaso De Cristoforis, was defeated by Ethiopian forces commanded by Ras Alula.
Creation and public controversy
King Umberto I ordered the obelisk to be incorporated into a new memorial in 1887. Designed by the architect Francesco Azzurri, it was erected in front of Rome’s Termini Station and formally dedicated on 5 June 1887 during celebrations of the Albertine Statute, the constitutional framework of the Kingdom of Italy. Plaques on the monument name 413 soldiers and 22 officers. From 1916, the square before the station was called Piazza dei Cinquecento, referring to the 500 men of the Dogali column.
The decision to commemorate an Italian defeat in a colonial war provoked opposition. Giosue Carducci declined a request from Rome’s mayor to write an ode for the monument, while Gabriele D’Annunzio disparaged the dead in his novel Il piacere.
Relocation and later colonial associations
In 1925, reconstruction of Termini Station led to the monument’s removal. It was transferred to the garden on Viale Luigi Einaudi, opposite the Baths of Diocletian, where it remains in the Zerai Deres Garden.
On 8 May 1937, during celebrations for the proclamation of the Italian Empire after the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, a statue of the Lion of Judah was added. The Lion of Judah is a historic Ethiopian royal symbol associated with the Solomonic monarchy. Following negotiations in Addis Ababa, the statue was returned to the Ethiopian government in 1960. Emperor Haile Selassie attended its reinstallation ceremony in Ethiopia and recalled the protest of Zerai Deres.
The protest of Zerai Deres
On 15 June 1938, the Eritrean interpreter Zerai Deres protested at the memorial against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia. He was interrupted while performing an act of devotion before the Lion of Judah, then wounded several people and was arrested. He was later confined in the judicial psychiatric hospital at Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, where he died in 1945. Contemporary historians have questioned whether he was genuinely mentally unstable, and he is regarded as a national hero in Eritrea and Ethiopia. A second monument to the Italian dead of Dogali was erected at Dogali itself.
Remains
The monument combines a red Aswan granite obelisk with a decorated pedestal. Including the star at its summit, the complete structure is 16.92 metres high, while the ancient monolith itself measures 6.34 metres. The present arrangement stands in the garden on Viale Luigi Einaudi, opposite the Baths of Diocletian.
The ancient Egyptian obelisk
The obelisk was carved during the reign of Ramesses II and originally stood with a twin before the Temple of Re at Heliopolis, an ancient Egyptian religious centre devoted especially to the solar god Re. The emperor Domitian brought it to Rome in the first century and placed it at the Temple of Isis Campensis, a Roman sanctuary dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis in the Campus Martius. After it fell from its pedestal, earth gradually covered it. Rodolfo Lanciani and his team found it near Santa Maria sopra Minerva in 1883, and its inscription identified its origin. It is one of thirteen Egyptian obelisks now in Rome. The twin obelisk had been removed in 1790 and was later installed in Florence’s Boboli Gardens.
The Italian memorial pedestal
At Termini Station, the obelisk rose from a pedestal approximately ten metres high. The pedestal carries bronze plaques on all four sides with the names of those killed at Dogali, arranged in two columns according to military rank. Its decoration also includes bronze lion masks, Roman eagles on the name plaques, and the inscription SPQR on the upper section. The abbreviation means “the Senate and People of Rome,” linking the modern memorial to the civic language of the ancient city.
