The Memorial Monument is situated on a wide hilly area at the km 120 of the Egyptian coastal road Alexandria-Marsa Matruh. The name of the place “Tel El Alamein” means “the hill of the twin peaks”.
All around it there is a wide desert plain where the great battles of El Alamein were fought. The building (designed by Paolo Caccia Dominioni, Officer of the Engineer Alpine Corp and 31
st Engineer battalion Commander in the Northern Africa) is composed of three different blocks: the Memorial Monument, the complex of the buildings along the coastal road and the Italian base “Quota 33”.
The Memorial Monument is composed of an octagonal tower that becomes thin towards the top and it enlarges at its base in a big wig. It houses inside the remains of the Fallen. On a small hill at about 500 meters to the North-west of the Memorial Monument, there is the Italian base QUOTA 33; near the base you can find a burial ground of tanks that has been sacked by Bedouins. In Quota 33, where the 52
nd Cannon Group of 152/37 (10
th July 1942) sacrificed itself, the Italian Base was built in 1948; from there 355 patrols (on a way 400 000 km-long) were carried out to recover the Fallen soldiers.
It was built by the Veterans of 31
st African Engineer Battalion, ordered by the General Honour Fallen Commission, in order to remember the battles in Marmarica, Tobruk, Alamein and Tunisia (1941-1943) as well as the following mission (Alamein 1948-1961). The Memorial Monument houses more than 5 200 Italian Bodies coming from the Desert. The mission participated also to the recovery of about 6 000 German and Allies bodies and it created the Italian Necropolis of Alamein and Tripoli.
The buildings situated along the street include from the left:
- the cemetery of the Libyan Askari, with the remains of 232 Fallen soldiers and a Mosque;
- the entry portico with the Honour Court;
- the service complex with a small museum of war relics and a projection room for videos.
The recovery of the Fallen Soldiers Bodies, started in 1943 by the British authorities (with Italian and German prisoners as manpower), was completed between 1949 and 1960 by a Delegation of the General Honour War Fallen Commission, headed by Colonel Paolo Caccia Dominioni.
The research and the exhumation of the Bodies, scattered on the wide battlefield, were arduous operations because of the wide minefield still efficient that in ten years caused the death of seven indigenous collaborators.
In 1955 the building of the Quota 33 base was completed. The base is also a monument for the 52
nd Cannon Group of 152/37, to remember the valor and the sacrifice of the artillery men that did not surrender against the Australian attack.
“Here a voice shouts and exhorts not to despair for the Italian destinies”. In the same year the building of the cemetery for the Libyan Askaris is also completed, following the rigid Muslim rules for the burial.