The Memorial Park is a green expanse in memory of the citizens of Fermo in the First World War. It stands next to Villa Vinci.
The Memorial Park in Fermo is a green expanse of trees in memory of the sacrifice of Fermo’s citizens who lost their lives during the battles of the First World War. It stands next to Villa Vinci, in front of the ruins of the Roman Theatre perched on the northern side of Girfalco Hill.
The Memorial Park in Fermo owes its birth to a circular that the undersecretary for Public Education Lupi issued to all the Royal Education Departments of Italy in 1922.
This document invited all the Italian classes to create a green space where every tree should have symbolized a fallen; they had to choose the trees according to the local climate, and the Institutions had to create an Executive Committee to draw up a List of the Fallen for each town.
The choice of the tree as a symbol of the life lost on the battle field was meaningful: in the Christian iconography, the tree often represents life, thus recalling also the knowledge in the Garden of Eden, while the trunk and the leaves symbolize the axis connecting Heaven with Earth.
In January 1923 gathered also in Fermo a Committee that, after many meetings and proposals, decided eventually that the ideal location was a plot of land donated by Count Guglielmo Vinci Gigliucci; it was called “Simone’s Field” or, in local dialect, “Campo de Scimò”.
Holm Oaks were planted in memory of the soldiers died in war, according to a list that is preserved still today in the National Archive and that had 207 names; the soldiers were mainly poor day labourers or farmers and it was not possible to plant a tree for each of them.
The Memorial Park was eventually inaugurated on 26 April 1925.
Today the Park has about 90 trees, because at that time many of them were planted also in the square next to the Cathedral, that had at that time less plant species than the ones currently planted in the luxuriant Girfalco Park.
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