The Unknown Soldier is a soldier dead in the first World War, whose body wasn’t identified, that is buried in the “Altare della patria” in Rome. The tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a symbol that represent all the war casualties.

In May, 1920 the major general Giulio Douhet, proposed to celebrate the Italian casualties with a monument to the Unknown Soldier in Rome. In 1921 Cesare Maria De Vecchi presented to the “Camera dei deputati” the idea and a law aimed to create, also in Italy, a monument dedicated to all the Italian soldiers dead in war.

The law was approved by the Parliament, so the Ministry of the war established a commission that had to choose eleven corpses of Italian soldiers unidentified. One of them would be buried into the “Altare della Patria”.

Each body came from a different zone of the Italian front of the first World War (Rovereto, the Dolomites, the tablelands, mount Grappa, Montello, the Basso Piave, Cadore, Gorizia, the Basso Isonzo, mount St. Michael and Castagnevizza del Carso).

The eleven coffins were transported to Gorizia and then to Aquileia. In the meantime, in the “Altare della patria” in Rome, were realized a tomb for the Unknown Soldier, under the statue of the goddess Rome.

The selection of the body, destined to the burial, was entrusted to Maria Bergamas, mother of a war volunteer of Gradisca, who joined the Italian troops and dead in war, without that his body was found.

The body of the soldierwas selected on the 28 of October 1921 in the Church of Aquileia. The coffin selected was situated in a cannon and placed on a funeral railway float.

The coffin started the trip towards Rome on the line Aquileia-Roma, passing through Udine, Treviso, Venezia, Padova, Rovigo, Ferrara, Bologna, Pistoia, Prato, Firenze, Arezzo, Chiusi, Orvieto with a low speed, so that the population could honor the Unknown Soldier.

The ceremony ended in Rome. The representations of the Italian troops, the widows and the mothers of the fallen in war, king Vittorio Emanuele III di Savoia, greeted the coffin’s arrival. The coffin was buried with a solemn ceremony in the “Altare della Patria” on the 4 of November 1921, the Day of the National Concord and the Armed Forces.

In the epigraph of the tomb was written "Ignoto militi", "XXIV MAGGIO MCMXV" and "IV NOVEMBRE MCMXVIII", the dates of the begin and the end of the conflict.

In 1921 was assigned the Medal of Honor to the Unknown Soldier, the major American military honor. Today the tomb was controlled by soldiers of the Armed Forces.