Viareggio, the monument in memory of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Commentary
The image of the funeral pyre built on 16 August 1822 on the beach of Viareggio for the cremation of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s body remained engraved in the memory of the local people, who overstressed the dark traits of a pagan ritual reminiscent of Ancient Greece’s practices. In the subsequent decades, the legacy of old beliefs, fears, and superstitions continued to affect the areas of present-day Piazza Mazzini and Pineta di Ponente, namely the portion of land known as the “Due Fosse” where, on 18 July 1822, the poet’s corpse had washed ashore. The legend of a curse haunting the place progressively intermingled with a changing political and social reality linked both to Viareggio’s growth from a fishing village into an independently administrated seaside town, and to the wider picture of the Italian Risorgimento.
It is at this juncture that the project relating to the erection of a monument commemorating Shelley entered the scene. In 1890, after about thirty years from the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy (17 March 1861), the university student Cesare Riccioni (a future lawyer, city council member and twice serving as Viareggio’s Mayor) and Pericle Pieri (an intellectual from Lucca and editor of the weekly Il Figurinaio) set up a Promoting Committee with this aim in mind. In 1875, a group coordinated by journalist and translator Enrico Sisco had paved the way for the initiative. Riccioni and Pieri belonged to a secular progressive coterie encompassing radical fringes and committed to laying the foundations for a democratic renewal of civic life. It is therefore no wonder that, well beyond popular superstitions, the intention to dedicate a public space to a foreign poet with a bad reputation as an atheist and revolutionary should result in the conservative and Catholic environments’ entrenchment. Suffice it to mention the censorious reproach of the Unità cattolica, whose article concerning the inauguration of the statue, published on 20 August 1894, considered such a worship of a “satanic poet” an insult to the Christian faith and a profanation of the history of Italian art and literature. That effigy was said to glorify anti-Christian feelings and plant the seed of barbarization in the Italian honourable traditions and aesthetic taste. In other words, the committee of Viareggio seemed to be paying homage to a perncious anti-Italian symbol.
Far from simply consisting in a memorial sculpture, Shelley’s effigy installed in the middle of the city square that has borne his name since 15 October 1900 (“Piazza Shelley”) was a catalyst for a heated political and cultural debate. The diatribe involved on the one hand the representatives of Catholic and pro-clerical fundamentalism and, on the other, the advocates of the constitution of a secular State which did not aprioristically exclude a dialogue with socialist, anarchic, and Masonic communities. Quite strikingly, a small town with a population of a few thousand residents, such as Viareggio at the time, evolved into a scenario for a dialectical confrontation that called to mind the vicissitudes of 9 June 1889 concerning Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. On that day, amid loud sounds of protest, a bronze statue created by Ettore Ferrari and portraying Giordano Bruno had been unveiled and positioned in the same place where, in 1600, the philosopher had been burned alive at the stake under condemnation by the Holy Office. The project, whose draft design had been presented (and rejected) in 1879, was backed up by a promoting committee and similarly caused a wave of indignation and stir in the ecclesiastical milieu. In the Post-Unitary Italy of the Historical Left, Bruno’s heritage, along with its heresy stigma, was gradually turning into a battle cry for antipapists and free-thought apologists against forms of coercive dogmatism.
The history of Shelley’s sculpture followed a similar path, with an early sketch dating back to 1892 (on the centenary of the poet’s birth) and deferred for two years, up to 30 September 1894, when the bust was eventually unveiled. The portrayal of Shelley as the embodiment of atheistic degeneration was thus replaced by Giosuè Carducci’s topos extolling the “spirito di titano, / entro virginee forme” (the “Titan’s spirit, / in a youthful body”) and the “poeta del liberato mondo” (the “poet of the liberated world”, in the ode “Presso l’urna di Percy Bysshe Shelley”, 1877, vv. 42-43, 50). The chorus of literary voices included Gabriele D’Annunzio, whose “Commemorazione di Percy Bysshe Shelley” (1892) compared him to a demigod and nothing short of Jesus Christ: in addition to devoting himself to humanity with a feeling of “heroic love”, Shelley would project this panic afflatus onto the whole Universe and consequently epitomize the “poeta della universale bontà, della universale pietà, del perdono e della pace” (the “poet of universal goodness and compassion, of forgiveness and peace”). Politically speaking, the author of Prometheus Unbound was hailed as the prophet of the Republican creed and of the emancipation of the oppressed, as the spokesman for an enlightened ferment of innovation and a futuristic non-conformism gravitating around the universal values of justice, sympathy, and solidarity. From this point of view, Viareggio was again the place where folklore and the cultural establishment, local as well as national and international contexts, merged in a unique combination. As Lorenzo Viani had once suggested in his “Memorie minime su Shelley: All’insegna di Prometeo” (1930), this combination found a synecdochic correlative in the Prometeo tavern (afterwards, Shelley tavern) located at the entrance of via di Mezzo: a gathering point for “saints and scoundrels” alike, that tavern became a commemorative site and a laboratory of ideas whose galvanized regulars had the chance to maintain a correspondence with Giovanni Bovio, Giovanni Rosadi, and Felice Cavallotti.
As to the phases leading to the construction of the monument, the broad scope of the initiative was confirmed by the fact that the promoting Committee, chaired by Riccioni, worked alongside an executive and an honorary Committee, the latter composed of Italian and English literary men and politicians, among whom were Edmondo De Amicis, Ruggiero Bonghi, Michele Coppino, Enrico Ferri, Domenico Menotti Garibaldi, the already cited Bovio and Cavallotti (acting as chairperson), William Gladstone and Algernon Charles Swinburne. The monument was commissioned to the sculptor Urbano Lucchesi (1844-1906), whose final draft contemplated a bronze bust meant to capture the poet’s Romantic and visionary energy, his dignified countenance, flowing hair, wide forehead, and intense look directed towards the sea. The bust was installed on a rectangular marble block with a double square base, whose front showed an epigraph by Bovio and, underneath it, a ringlet of laurel and oak twigs framing the volume of Prometheus Unbound. The opening ceremony was held on Sunday, 30 September 1894. Among the participants were Viareggio’s Mayor Ferdinando Nelli and Colonel Leigh Hunt, together with representatives of citizen associations and of the Masonic lodge, several journalists and a group of anarchic and radical sympathizers, deeply moved by the solemn and keen notes of Riccioni’s speech. Unsurprisingly, all this was accompanied by a series of controversies and disputes. In this connection, the press (whether local or linked to wider circuits) acted as a powerful sounding board, laying the groundwork for a precious historical archive that still hinges on the collection of notebooks kept by the wife of Riccioni, i.e. Salomea Kruceniski (Solomija Krušel’nyc’ka), a famous and fascinating opera singer of Ukrainian origins who also starred in various performances of Giacomo Puccini’s operas, such as an audience-hailed Madama Butterfly at the Teatro Grande in Brescia in 1904. These notebooks, crammed with date annotations and newspaper articles, are now held by the “Archivio del Centro Documentario Storico di Viareggio” and have been recently examined in a book by Luca Guidi (Il monumento di Viareggio a Percy Bysshe Shelley. La storia dall'archivio Kruceniski-Riccioni toccando Puccini, Viani, la Butterfly e documenti inediti, 2017).
This crucial first chapter in the history of Viareggio’s monument to Shelley – the first ever to be erected in Italy – was followed by a series of complementing chapters, linked on the one hand to political and aggregative demonstrations or centenaries of the author’s death (1903, 1922, 2006, 2022), and on the other to an incident that might again be set in parallel with Giordano Bruno’s commemorations, namely his first honorary statue in Rome. This statue dated back to the 1849’s Roman Republic and was soon knocked down at the behest of Pius IX. As regards Shelley’s bust, the obliterating phase coincides with the 1940s, during the Nazi occupation. The story goes that, while retreating, the German troops were resolved to melt the monument’s bronze with the purpose of manufacturing weapons, were it not for the brave deed of Veturio Paolini, a foreman of the municipal administration, who removed it from the pedestal and concealed it in a basement. In 1946, two years after the city’s liberation, the National Liberation Committee and the Mayor Corrado Ciompi had the bust relocated at the centre of Piazza Shelley. In this very square, a metal plaque in memory of Paolini was inaugurated in 2013. In 2017, a conclusive restoration work followed, including the retrieval of the bust’s marble cymatium. Throughout the decades, Shelley’s mythography steeped in the areas of Viareggio and Versilia has continued to attract interest at various levels, from the field of political claims to historical memory and the cultural tourism sector, in a unique encounter between the utopian-prophetic heroism of the “Prometheus Unbound” figure and the proud spirit of the Apuan-Tyrrhenian people.
Documents
[Photo and English translations by Laura Giovannelli, 2025]
• Giovanni Bovio’s epigraph engraved on the front part of the marble pedestal of the monument:
MDCCCXCIV
TO P. B. SHELLEY
COR CORDIUM
IN MDCCCXXII
DROWNED IN THIS SEA
BURNED ON THIS SHORE
WHERE
HE MEDITATED ON PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
A FINAL TESTAMENT
TO WHICH EVERY GENERATION
WOULD CONNECT
ITS FIGHTS ITS TEARS AND ITS REDEMPTION.
• Excerpt from Cesare Riccioni’s inaugural address, 30 September 1894 (quoted in Stefano Bucciarelli, “Shelley sulla spiaggia di Viareggio: mito, monumento, politica e memoria”, p. 61):
“The monument […] is also, and most of all, a tribute to the noble-minded fighter for goodness and light, as Gabriele D’Annunzio says, against all the implacable enemies of mankind; a tribute to the generous, gifted and prescient reformer, who courageously claimed that there are truths, unquestionable truths, going well beyond official beliefs and official intents… Shelley’s mind shines with that sacred vision that has been inspiring fighters and apostles, from the poisoned Greek philosopher to the fair, mourned-for martyr of Nazareth, from Galilei to Garibaldi”
Illustrations
[Photos by Laura Giovannelli, 2025]
Fig. 1 - Piazza Shelley, Viareggio
Fig. 2 - Percy Bysshe Shelley’s bust in the square dedicated to him in Viareggio
Fig. 3 - Details of the bas-relief
Fig. 4 - Commemorative metal plaque for Veturio Paolini, Piazza Shelley, Viareggio
Fig. 5 - A side view of the monument
Bibliography
Biblioteca Franco Serantini – Istituto di storia sociale, della Resistenza e dell’età contemporanea della provincia di Pisa, “Percy Bysshe Shelley”, https://www.bfscollezionidigitali.org/oggetti/18114-percy-bysshe-shelley (last accessed 02/05/2025; the archive contains old and contemporary photographs of the square and monument).
Bucciarelli, Stefano, “Shelley sulla spiaggia di Viareggio: mito, monumento, politica e memoria”, in Simona Beccone, Paolo Bugliani, Angelo Chiantelli, and Riccardo Roni (eds), Percy Bysshe Shelley in contesto. Tra filosofia, storia e letteratura, Pisa, ETS, 2023, pp. 51-79.
Carducci, Giosuè, “Presso l’urna di Percy Bysshe Shelley”, in Delle Odi barbare. Libri II ordinati e corretti, Libro II, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1893.
D’Annunzio, Gabriele, “Commemorazione di Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 agosto 1792-1892)”, Il Mattino, 4-5 August 1892.
Flego, Fabio, “‘Straccato’ sulla spiaggia: Percy Bysshe Shelley a Viareggio”, Anglistica Pisana, 12 (1-2), 2015, pp. 25-33.
Fornaciari, Paolo (ed.), Percy Bysshe Shelley. Viareggio 1922, “luogo del Mito” – Il centenario del rogo di Shelley, Viareggio, Pezzini, 2001.
Fornaciari, Patrizia, “La vicenda del monumento a Shelley nella Versilia di fine ’800. Il mito romantico del poeta inglese, i nuovi valori dell’Italia postunitaria”, Quaderni di storia e cultura viareggina, 2, 2001, pp. 35-48.
Guidi, Luca, Il monumento di Viareggio a Percy Bysshe Shelley. La storia dall'archivio Kruceniski-Riccioni toccando Puccini, Viani, la Butterfly e documenti inediti, Viareggio, Cinquemarzo, 2017.
“Il monumento di Viareggio ad un poeta satanico”, L’Unità cattolica, 26 August 1894.
Lippi, Adolfo, Monumento a Shelley, Viareggio, Edizioni Luci del Porto, 2002.
Migliorini, Anna Vittoria Bertuccelli, “Le ceneri di Shelley”, in Simona Beccone, Paolo Bugliani, Angelo Chiantelli, and Riccardo Roni (eds), Percy Bysshe Shelley in contesto. Tra filosofia, storia e letteratura, Pisa, ETS, 2023, pp. 35-49.
Riccioni, Cesare, P.B. Shelley, Viareggio, Cinquemarzo, 2013.
Sereni, Umberto, Fra il Tirreno e le Apuane. Arte e cultura tra Otto e Novecento, Florence, Artificio, 1990.
Testi, Manrico, Shelley a Viareggio a 200 anni dalla sua morte, Preface by Giorgio Del Ghingaro, Viareggio, Pezzini, 2022.
Viani, Lorenzo, “Memorie minime su Shelley: All’insegna di Prometeo”, Corriere della Sera, 12 August 1930.
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Record by
Laura Giovannelli
Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics
University of Pisa
(May 2025)
Ultimo aggiornamento
11.08.2025