Orphan Memories and Difficult Pasts. The Present Memory of the Casa degli Orfani di Guerra of Clusone at the Centenary of its Foundation (1925-2025)

Abstract

The article analyses the centenary of the “Casa degli Orfani di Guerra Vittorio Emanuele III” in the province of Bergamo, as a case of difficult heritage, investigating how an institution’s past is rendered publicly communicable when moral narratives of care intersect with politically compromised origins. Established in 1925 under the direction of Monsignor Giovanni Antonietti, an influential local figure embedded in Fascist-era political and patronage networks, the Casa is commemorated today through a predominantly philanthropic and moral register that foregrounds protection, education, and social mobility while attenuating the political density of its genesis. Based on a qualitative case-study design triangulating institutional digital communications, guided engagements with the site, and former residents’ biographical accounts, the Casa constitutes a micro-site through which the “good Italian” paradigm is locally reproduced via care-based moral legitimation. The article advances the notion of “orphan memories” to designate a double condition: memories carried by those who were literally made orphans by war, and, at the same time, an institutional memory that is itself “orphaned” insofar as it is selectively detached from the political genealogies and historical antagonisms that would render its past more openly conflictual in the present.