EARTHQUAKE GRAVESA majority of the people who died in the earthquake were never recovered from under the rubble. Many were buried in collective graves on the ‘falce’ (or 'scythe'—the hook of land that forms Messina’s famous natural port) before being moved to the Gran Camposanto.
Click here for a transcription of this gravestone.
There are many individual graves that bear the date of 28 December 1908 and/or references to 'horrendous disaster' of that date.
But there is no collective monument to all the victims of the disaster in Messina ’s Gran Camposanto. The material damage to the cemetery, and the absence of any great collective expression of mourning, form a striking contrast with the Gran Camposanto’s original purpose as a place of collective memory.
