Cappella espiatoria

On 29 July 1900, at the end of a sports event in Monza, the anarchist Gaetano Bresci shot and killed Umberto I, King of Italy.

The King’s widow Margherita and his son Vittorio Emanuele III had the Cappella Espiatoria built on the site where he was killed. It was inaugurated on 29 July 1910 - the tenth anniversary of his assassination.

Designed by Giuseppe Sacconi, who also designed the Altare della Patria in Rome, and by his pupil, Guido Cirilli, the Cappella Espiatoria in Monza consists of a 35-metre-tall Oggiona stone obelisk, with two large alabaster Latin crosses on the sides and decorated by a bronze sculpture of the Pietà by Ludovico Pogliaghi. The top is crowned by a bronze cushion holding some symbolic objects linked to the Royal family: a sceptre, the collar badge of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation and the Savoy crown. 

At the base of the obelisk is a chapel, decorated inside with Byzantine mosaics and coloured ancient marble. A “Glory of the Lamb” is depicted in the centre of the vault and some round inserts contain the “Saints” of the House of Savoy. You go down into the crypt from the back.

The vault is entirely decorated with mosaics showing a star-dotted sky.  In the centre, a black marble memorial stone showing the date 29 July 1900 commemorates the exact point of the assassination.