The RF President, Vladimir Putin, has suggested building a park to commemorate Italian soldiers who fought in Crimea, at a meeting with Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi on the peninsula.
According to RIA Novosti, the billionaire ex-premier of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, supported the idea and promised help with its implementation. It will be located around the district of the Gasforta Mountain, where many Italians fought and were buried during the Crimean war in the middle of the 19th century. At the time, France had promised Sardinia help in accumulating lands if it entered the war with Russia.
A corps of 20,000 soldiers under the command of two generals landed in Crimea. The Italians took part in only one battle, near the river Chernaya, and lost 30 soldiers. More than 2,000 died of typhus and cholera. A temple bearing the names of the dead was built in their memory in 1882 at the expense of the Italian government.
During World War II, the temple was ruined. In 2004 a memorial was built at the foot of the Gasforta Mountain, but the cemetery itself was gone.
Putin and Berlusconi placed red roses at the foot of the monument
