Futa Pass Cemetery

It was the site of bitter combat between 9 and 21 April 1945, but most of the interred fell in late August 1944 between Carrara on the Ligurian Sea and the area surrounding Rimini.

In the wake of the 22 December 1955 Accord on War Graves between the BRD & Italy[1] signed in Bonn and ratified by the Italian legislature 12 August 1957 as Law 801,[2] in 1959 the German War Graves Commission entrusted oversight of the project to the architect Dieter Oesterlen.

In the planning and execution he was assisted by the landscape architects Walter Rossow and Ernst Cramer and the sculptor Helmut Lander [de].

[3] The reburied soldiers were collected from neighboring battlefields and churchyards in the provinces of Bologna, Metropolitan Florence, Forlì-Cesena, Lucca, Modena, Pesaro and Urbino, Pisa, Pistoia, Ravenna and Reggio Emilia;[4] and a number of remains were also identified.

[4] The cemetery covers 12 hectares[5] with 16,000 granite headstones[5] on 72 natural lawns, enclosed by a spiral 2000 meter long wall with 67 quarried crosses.