Non Dimenticarmi is a permanent installation by artist Ferruccio Ascari in Piazza Fontana (Beccaria side) and was donated to the City of Milan in May of this year. It will be inaugurated on December 12, 2025, the 56th anniversary of the black-leaning terrorist group Ordine Nuovo’s attack on the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura. The bomb placed in the central hall killed 17 people and seriously injured 88.
The work, “Non dimenticarmi,” was created to remember the 136 victims of eight neofascist massacres that, between 1969 and 1980, cast a long shadow of blood across Italy with the aim of destabilizing the democratic order: 1969 Milan, Piazza Fontana; 1970 Freccia del Sud train; 1972 Peteano; 1973 Milan Police Headquarters; 1974 Italicus train; 1974 Brescia, Piazza della Loggia; 1976 Brescia Piazzale Arnaldo; 1980 Bologna Central Station. The 136 victims are joined by Giuseppe Pinelli, the anarchist railway worker who, on the night of December 15–16, 1969, fell from a fourth-floor window at the Milan Police Headquarters.
Ascari conceived the installation “as a device to awaken collective memory,” intended to spark a dialogue between past and present so that what happened then—indiscriminate violence against innocents to generate terror and justify authoritarian interventions—never repeats itself.
Art critic Giorgio Verzotti, in a written reflection on the project, states: “Non Dimenticarmi is a public work, designed for a public space and created so that memory is not lost—not of great personalities, of heroes, but of those simple, anonymous people ripped from life by a terrorist act, a blind and vile violence that saw neofascist forces colluding with corrupted state apparatus. It is a monument, in the modern sense: not a celebratory structure, not a tribute to an abstract idea, but an invitation to reflect on what happened in our country a few decades ago.”
Non Dimenticarmi consists of 137 iron stems interconnected by a dense web of irregular lines. Each stem points to a victim; at the top of every curved stem hangs a wind chime. Driven by the wind, the bells chime and become voices—the voices of the victims. These presences invite passersby to remember and to ensure that what happened then does not repeat itself.
The rust coating the iron is a deliberate choice: it evokes the devastation of those dynamite attacks. “I could have mitigated the brutality by painting the iron,” Ascari said, “but I chose not to. Until the day comes when the responsibility of the ‘deviated’ state apparatuses in those massacres is clearly acknowledged, that rust will not be removed from the iron of this work, and neither will our memory.”
The presence of this work in the heart of Milan offers citizens and passersby—especially younger generations—a chance to reflect on a painful past of terror and on the value of memory in building a future free from fear and open to constructive dialogue.
The installation was made possible thanks to the initiative of the “Non Dimenticarmi Committee,” formed in 2019 to donate to the City of Milan a civic-society-backed work that serves as a reminder and a space for reflection for the entire country.
Photo credits: Archive of the artist. On the cover Ferruccio Ascari
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