The Victims of Labour
A monument to the Gotthard tunnel workers who died digging it.
Nicolas Augsburger Rossi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Nicolas Augsburger Rossi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Nicolas Augsburger Rossi — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Nicolas Augsburger Rossi — CC BY-SA 4.0
A museum in a villa built by the sculptor Vincenzo Vela in 1865 in Ligornetto, his native village, across the Swiss border north-west of Como. Vela (1820–1891) was among the foremost sculptors of the nineteenth century in Italy and Switzerland, and his name is tied to realism in sculpture: he moved away from classical idealisation towards real bodies and features, and treated social subjects. His best-known work is The Victims of Labour — a monument to the workers of the Gotthard tunnel who died in its digging, and among the first major sculptural works to commemorate ordinary labourers rather than rulers or saints. The museum shows his full-size plaster models, which is how a sculptor works before the marble is cut — so you see the process rather than only the result. The villa and its garden are classified as Swiss national heritage. About half an hour by car from Como across the border.
A monument to the Gotthard tunnel workers who died digging it.
You see how a sculptor works before the marble, not only the result.
Among the first major sculpture to commemorate ordinary people.
Ligornetto, Canton Ticino, Switzerland
A railway tunnel through the Swiss Alps, dug between 1872 and 1881 over fifteen kilometres, and the longest in the world at the time. Thousands of workers, mostly Italian, dug it in harsh conditions: high heat, rock dust, collapses and disease. About two hundred died in the work itself and hundreds more of lung disease. Vela's monument was a direct response to that, and is shown in the museum at full size.
The Italian-speaking Swiss canton, south of the Alps and bordering Lombardy. Its language, food and architecture are Italian while its political and administrative system is Swiss, and that mixture makes it unlike either. Its main towns are Lugano, Locarno and Bellinzona — the last holding three medieval castles on the World Heritage list. The currency is the Swiss franc, not the euro.
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