STELE DI VISINALE

The Visinale Stele is a tombstone, consisting of a metal bas-relief, depicting a soldier intent on shooting, with a deity of war behind him. It is located along the SS356 state road, at the intersection of Via Primo Maggio and Via Pio Paschini, in the hamlet of Visinale dello Judrio in Corno di Rosazzo.
The stone commemorates the first shot fired by an Italian soldier in the First World War.
In 1915, the hamlet of Visinale dello Judrio was crossed by the defensive line that connected the mountains of the Judrio valley to Mount San Biagio. On the night of 23 May 1915, two soldiers guarding the old wooden bridge over the Judrio river, which then marked the border with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, noticed enemy soldiers stealthily undermining the bridge. Having understood their intentions, the first shots of the war came from their rifles and prevented the completion of the attack. On the tombstone there is a sentence in Latin that reads ‘PERCUTIT HINC PRIMUS DETRUDENS FINIBUS HOSTEM IUS NOSTRUM CLAMANS ITALA FATA TONAT’ – SCR. F. CALONGHI – (“from here the first rifle shot started, chasing the enemy across the border, loudly claiming our right and making s the Italian destiny resound”). The two soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, Pietro dell’Acqua and Costantino Carta, would be decorated with the Bronze Medal for Military Valour, each with the following motivation: “Together with a comrade, he promptly and energetically prevented the destruction of a military bridge.”