Rosanna Rizzi
This study examines the Spomen Kosturnica of Barletta (1970), designed by the Yugoslav sculptor Dušan Džamonja, as a case study of the “incomplete” and contested memory of Liberation in post-war Europe. Dedicated to Yugoslav Partisans who died on Italian soil during the Second World War, the monument embodies a transnational narrative of Liberation that has remained largely marginal within Italian public memory. Rather than treating Liberation as a fixed historical moment, the study frames it as a process whose meanings are continuously renegotiated through commemoration, omission, institutional neglect and uneven grassroots recovery.
The Spomen Kosturnica lies at the intersection of conflicting memory regimes: Yugoslav socialist commemorative culture, Italian narratives of the Resistance, and the post-1991 fragmentation of references following the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Long existing without a stable museum framework or educational mediation, the monument has become an “orphaned” site of memory, illustrating the fragile agency of local and transnational actors in preserving the voices of those who fought under occupation.
The study argues that, in the absence of sustained institutional stewardship, the contemporary significance of the monument is being reshaped through grassroots historical research, archival work, translation of primary sources, and educational initiatives involving associations and local communities. These practices operate as forms of mediated testimony, reactivating the monument as a “voice of Liberation” that speaks both of wartime sacrifice and of the difficulties of transmitting antifascist memory across national and generational boundaries.
By situating the Spomen Kosturnica of Barletta within broader debates on memory conflicts, commemoration, and education, the study highlights how peripheral memorial sites can challenge nationally bounded narratives. Furthermore, the study considers how digital mapping and archival annotation of individual life stories can help reactivate the “voice” of such silenced sites, contributing to a more relational and transnational understanding of Liberation in Europe.
Rosanna Rizzi is an architect and secondary school teacher based in Apulia, Italy. Her research focuses on Yugoslav memorial heritage in Italy. She collaborates with the Coordinamento Nazionale per la Jugoslavia and the Fondazione Gramsci di Puglia