The places of Cesare Battisti

Cesare Battisti was a socialist politician and researcher of Trentino, strongly committed to the Italian character of his community. A plaque commemorates his birthplace in Piazza Duomo, but in truth he was born in Via Don Arcangelo Rizzi in 1875, when Trento was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

He goes to the high school “Imperial regio ginnasio” in Via Santissima Trinità (today Liceo “Giovanni Prati”), thereafter he attends several universities and graduates in Geography in Florence.

Back to Trento, he pursues his studies on Trentino; the Museo Civico, today’s Municipal library, is the place that mainly represents this phase.

In the meanwhile Battisti nurtures his political interest and in 1898 he founds the socialist party of Trento. Thanks to the newspaper “Il popolo”, directed with his wife Ernesta Bittanti in the typography in Via Esterle, his activity becomes very important for the propaganda.

In 1902 Battisti takes part for the first time in the city council at Palazzo Thun, in the ranks of socialists; he is confirmed several times and he represents the city also in the Wien Parliament in 1911. In 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, he comes to a decision: going to Italy and promoting the Italian intervention against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In that year Trentino is devastated by the War, impoverished, emptied from his inhabitants and occupied by foreign soldiers. In 1916 Cesare Battisti was imprisoned by the Austro-Hungarian army on the Corno mountain, chained and brought to Trento together with Fabio Filzi, another patriot: both were condemned to death and executed in the Buonconsiglio Castle on 12th July 1916.

The life of the politician from Trentino was short, just 41 years, but the death sentence made him an icon of the First World War. Twenty years after Battisti’s death a mausoleum in his honor was inaugurated on the top of Doss Trento.