On September 2, 2026, as part of the 8th Dannunziano Festival—scheduled to take place in Pescara from August 29 to September 6—Giordano Bruno Guerri, president of the Il Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation, and Prof. Elisa Sala of DICATAM – University of Brescia, will present the event “The Construction Site of the Mausoleum at the Vittoriale degli Italiani: From Design to Restoration.” The event will take place at 6:30 p.m. at the Aurum (Largo Gardone Riviera, 65126 Pescara) and will feature a screening of videos and an exhibition of panels dedicated to the Mausoleum.
This initiative is part of a broader research project developed in recent years by the Il Vittoriale degli Italiani Foundation and DICATAM at the University of Brescia, formalized in the research agreement titled “The Sites of Gabriele d’Annunzio and Gian Carlo Maroni: Between History and Design. Knowledge and Enhancement of the Architectural, Museum, and Environmental Complex of the Vittoriale degli Italiani,” which is scientifically coordinated by Prof. Irene Giustina and in which Prof. Elisa Sala participates.
The event in Pescara represents a further development of the exhibition staged at the Foundation of the Order of Architects PPC in Brescia in the spring of 2026, curated by Irene Giustina and Elisa Sala, whose panels will be presented once again during the Dannunziano Festival, and it precedes the publication of the book “I Think—as an Architect and as a Sculptor—of My Tomb.” Genesis, Design, and Construction of the Mausoleum at the Vittoriale degli Italiani, edited by Irene Giustina and Elisa Sala (Silvana Editoriale, in press).
This research reconstructs, for the first time in its entirety, the long history of the Mausoleum’s conception and construction, beginning with d’Annunzio’s earliest reflections on his own burial—prior to his move to Lake Garda—and proceeding through the designs developed with Napoleone Martinuzzi and the idea, conceived after his experience in Fiume, of a Heroes’ Memorial in Maderno. The decisive turning point came with d’Annunzio’s arrival in Gardone in 1921: the idea of the tomb gradually became integrated into the broader vision of the Vittoriale, transforming from a personal funerary project into a collective monument intended to celebrate the memory of the Poet and his comrades-in-arms.
Gian Carlo Maroni, architect of the Vittoriale and a privileged interpreter of d’Annunzio’s visions, played a central role in this process; he was called upon to translate those visions into an architectural form consistent with the Garda complex. From the finalization of the definitive design between 1937 and 1938, to the laying of the cornerstone in 1939 and the start of construction in 1941, the history of the Mausoleum is traced through the project’s transformations and the practical conditions of its construction—marked by economic difficulties, material shortages, and the events of the war—until the closure of the construction site in 1945.
Drawings, photographs, archival documents, and the construction log thus allow us to trace the journey from concept to finished work and to present the Mausoleum not as a static, predefined monument, but as the outcome of a long and complex process of transformation. A process in which architecture, landscape, symbols, techniques, and materials all contribute to the construction of a monumental structure intended to give form and permanence to D’Annunzio’s memory and myth, right up to the most recent restoration and enhancement projects.