Brothers… Brothers of Torricella Peligna. Brothers of Italy: it’s been 100 years, since 1922, that the ”Angel of Victory” keeps the names and heroism of the brothers who sacrificed on the battlefields during the two world wars to make Italy greater and freer. There were 150 fallen in the 1915 - 18 war and other 100 deads from 1936 to 1945. “Humble heralds of a more civil humanity, your native Torricella with motherly love and pride, consecrated you to history”: these noble words are inscribed on the monument of the ”Angel of Victory” created by the artist Nicola Lucci from Pennadomo which was inaugurated on 8 September 1922.

This solemn monument raises in the middle of the hill, surrounded by an amphitheatre of pines and fir trees. The sculpture of the Angel, with its classical female traits and its laurel wreath, stands on square-shaped travertine steps on whose sides the names of the heroic brothers of Torricella are engraved with an obelisk on top. The Angel gazes over the old town and reaches the Memorial Tower on the opposite hill, near the Church of Saint James the Apostle, symbolically uniting in an only spirit the community of Torricella of the past and present.

During World War II the monument was damaged and restauration works were necessary, the last made part of a European research which identified the Angel of Peace and the Civic Tower as sites preserving artistic crafts of the Twentieth Century. A privilege that joins Torricella to other 7 European monuments only.

The hundred-year-old pinewood around the monument is one of the most precious green areas, a pleasant place in a splendid position between the sea and the Maiella massif. It was Antonio Porreca who designed it in 1922 spreading his passion to all the inhabitants and today the pinewood is one of the symbols of Torricella Peligna together with the Angel of Victory.

[Credits | Text: Ottavio Di Renzo De Laurentis | Translation: Mirella Rapa | Voice and music: Studio Qreate | Photo: Laura Di Biase]