Battipaglia · IT

Monumento a Paolo Borsellino

In the heart of Battipaglia, a small market town in the province of Salerno, a modest memorial stele gives a central public square its name. Piazza Paolo Borsellino is dedicated to the Italian anti-mafia judge assassinated by Cosa Nostra in Palermo on 19 July 1992, and the monument at its centre extends that remembrance to the five officers of his escort who died with him. It is not a grand tourist sight so much as a piece of civic conscience: a place where a community of southern Italy publicly reaffirms its stance against organised crime. Unveiled on 27 April 2013, the monument was raised through local effort rather than state commission—a retired police officers' association, a masonry firm, a marble supplier and a plant nursery together gave shape to it. For visitors, the interest lies less in the sculpture itself than in the role the memorial plays in the town's calendar: every year on 19 July it becomes the setting for a public ceremony of flowers, speeches and student readings.