Cimitero di Guerra di Milano (Milan War Cemetery) – Milan, Italy - Atlas Obscura

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Cimitero di Guerra di Milano (Milan War Cemetery)

Aniasi Park

A British Commonwealth cemetery in the heart of Milan, with 421 allied soldiers died during World War II. 

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In the Cimitero di Guerra di Milano (Milan War Cemetery), 421 soldiers from British Commonwealth nations (27 of whom are unidentified); who participated in the Italian Liberation War and died during World War II are buried.

The small cemetery, in the typical British style, is immersed in the greenery of the Aniasi Park and is surrounded by a hedge and protected by large trees. It is made up of white plaques all the same on an English lawn. At the entrance, there is a large white cross positioned on the main axis between the entrance and the first row of burials, which symbolizes the sacrifice of the fighters who died in the Italian campaign.

In Milan, which had already been liberated by the partisans on April 25, the 4th U.S. Army Corps entered the city on May 2, 1945, without fighting. The Allied forces had, therefore, few losses in the city theater. This cemetery houses the bodies from the areas surrounding the Milanese city, prisoners of war, aviators who were transferred here from places such as Bergamo, Boves, Carpi, Cicagna, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Turin, and Val d’Isère—a few years after the end of the war.

The cemetery is made up of identical rectangular white stone tombstones, regardless of military rank or rank, race, or religious belief, they are aligned in four groups and arranged in meticulous order. In the background of the entrance, there is a small chapel, where the book with the signatures of the visitors and a document with the salient information of the cemetery is kept.

Only one woman is buried in the cemetery, a physiotherapist of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy in the service of the 64th British General Hospital, who died at 28 while serving in Italy in the allied medical unit.

Two Italian military cooperators of the allied troops are also buried here, as well as some Czech soldiers.  There are no American servicepersons buried here.

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August 4, 2021

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