Federico Seismit-Doda - Roma, Italy - Statues of Historic Figures on Waymarking.com

Federico Seismit-Doda, born in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), in the kingdom of Dalmatia (now Croatia), in 1825 and died in Rome in 1893, was an Italian politician. He graduated from the University of Padua and collaborated with Caffè Pedrocchi. In 1849 he fought with the volunteers in Veneto and in 1849 he participated in the defense of the Roman Republic. After his exile in Greece and Piedmont in 1850, he collaborated with various newspapers and magazines and published a volume of his memoirs entitled "Volontaires venetiens". In 1878 he became minister of Finances in the Cairoli I government, with the interim Treasury, and favored the gradual abolition of the tax on the ground (which a few years before had triggered the fall of the historical Right) and a more equitable distribution of the tax burden. After the annexation of Rome to the Kingdom of Italy, he had also been elected for four mandates as municipal councilor in the capital; and so, when the first Cairoli government fell, he accepted the finance department in the Capitoline council.

Immediately after his death, the organizing committee, composed, among others, of Giuseppe Zanardelli and Guido Baccelli, was formed to erect a monument in his honor. In 1903, the municipality of Rome authorized its erection on Piazza Benedetto Cairoli, but this disposition was abandoned because of the international tensions raised by the irredentist ideas of Seismit-Doda, particularly embarrassing since the entry of Italy into the Triple Alliance (1882) with Austria and Germany.

The bronze statue by Eugenio Maccagnani and the travertine base were ready in 1906, but it was not until July 18, 1918 (at the end of the First World War) that its installation was re-approved in the gardens of the Piazza Benedetto Cairoli. It took place during the night, without any ceremony, in March 1919.

Federico Seismit-Doda is represented seated, in a thoughtful attitude, holding a book in his right hand. An inscription is engraved on the base:

"On the battlefields
in the Parliament
in the councils of the Crown and of the Municipality
strenuous advocate of freedom
of the greatness of the homeland".

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/21/2023 GURUGU visited it