Torre di San Martino della Battaglia

When Italy crowdfunded a tower to commemorate one of its defining unification battles, it made the journey to the top nearly half a kilometre long. Rather than climbing conventional flights of stairs, visitors circle upward along a gradual spiral ramp, passing painted scenes from the country’s path to nationhood.

Built between 1880 and 1893 through a nationwide public subscription, the neo-Gothic monument rises from the hill where Sardinian and Austrian forces clashed on June 24, 1859. The wider Battle of Solferino and San Martino was the last major engagement in which every participating army was personally commanded by its monarch: Napoleon III of France, Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. The scale of the fighting would later help inspire the creation of the Red Cross.

Inside, monumental frescoes by Vittorio Bressanin, Vincenzo De Stefani, Giuseppe Vizzotto and Raffaello Pontremoli turn the ascent into a painted chronology of the Risorgimento. At the summit, a beacon flashes the green, white and red of the Italian flag across the surrounding countryside. Behind the tower, an ossuary quietly preserves the memory of the soldiers who fought on the hill.

Today, visitors follow the 490-metre incline to a crenellated terrace overlooking vineyards, the lower reaches of Lake Garda and the battlefield below. The climb begins as a history lesson and ends with the landscape that history transformed.