M.Bianchi monument @ Belmonte Calabro

The monument to Michele Bianchi is a huge funeral monument, built in Belmonte Calabro, in the province of Cosenza, in the 1930s by the fascist regime in honor of the hierarch and quadrumvir of the March on Rome.

The monument was commissioned to the sculptor Ercole Drei by the secretariat of the party without competition, and the supervision of the construction was entrusted to Maria Elia De Seta Pignatelli, who had maintained a relationship with the deceased; Drei was assisted in the design by Eng. Giuseppe Crocetta of the Civil Engineers of Cosenza.

It consists of a tall column covered in travertine, inspired by Trajan's Column and surmounted by a very particular iron cross with four horizontal arms and its shape visible from all directions. Inside the entire shaft runs a spiral staircase that reaches the upper balcony, at the center of which is the aforementioned cross which, originally, when it was still illuminated, served as a lighthouse.

At the base of the column is the hierarch's burial chamber, furnished inside with pennants and bronze furnishings stolen as soon as fascism fell, today partly found and kept in the basements of the Belmonte Calabro Town Hall. Along the entire base of the monument there are friezes depicting the salient moments of the hierarch's life. A thick pine forest has been planted around the monument.

The body of Michele Bianchi (who died in February 1930) was transferred here on 28 October 1932 (tenth anniversary of the March on Rome), in the presence of Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo and Cesare Maria De Vecchi. On 30 March 1939 he was visited by the Duce himself, accompanied by Achille Starace and Giuseppe Bottai.

The hill, known as Bastia or Vastia, was formerly occupied by the tower of Bastia, a coastal lookout tower over the Tyrrhenian Sea.