Cellpic Sunday – The Unknown Soldier

Tomba del Milite Ignoto

Rome, Italy.

After World War I, many countries chose to bury an unknown soldier, as they note in the United States memorial, “known but to God.” The Italian unknown soldier rests under the statue of the goddess Roma at the Altare della Patria and represents all of the Italian soldiers killed and missing during the war.

The monument was dedicated in 1921 and the beautiful Romanesque architecture disguises the monument’s true age as it is barely over a century old. The article about the monument on Wikipedia notes that the piazza is the scene of official ceremonies that take place annually on the occasions of Italian Liberation Day (April 25), Italian Republic Day (June 2), and National Unity and Armed Forces Day (November 4).

In researching the details for this post, I found a moving story of how the unknown soldier was chosen for the honor. The mother of a soldier who was lost in the war was selected and allowed to review the caskets of eleven unknowns. She would choose one to represent all of the Italian unknowns. You can read the story here.

About the photo: Captured with my Samsung S20U, I was on the upper deck of a tour bus that drove by the monument. I could not hear the tour guide due to the poor public address system on the bus, so once the photo was captured, I used the GPS metadata captured by my phone to geolocate my position when the photo was taken. Given the design of the monument, I was sure this was some monument for an early Roman ruler.

I brought the image into Adobe Lightroom where I adjusted for tilt and cropped as necessary. Then I took it to Luminar Neo for noise removal, a tweak by the Enhance AI tool, and raising the shadows to bring out more detail in the shaded front of the monument. Click on the image to view it in 2K HD on my Flickr site.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner