MUSSOLINI’S MONUMENT.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 25 June 1929, Page 5

MUSSOLINI’S MONUMENT.

SIXTY-FOOT MARBLE MONOLITH

ITALIAN IDOLATRY.

(By Telegraph-Press Assn.-Copyright.) (Received This Day, 8.55 a.m.) LONDON, June 24.

The Manchester Guardian’s correspondent at Carrara states That a famous marble monolith, 60 feet tall and weighing. 380 tons, cut out of a Carrara marble quarry a year ago, was launched to-day in a specially-design-ed raft to be shipped to the mouth of the Tiber to await a full tide. In the autumn it will be erected, in a. new forum in Rome dedicated to the Duec and called the Colonna Mussolini. It has taken a year to bring this great column thirty miles from the quarry. Sometimes it was launched on swift mountain torrents and sometimes drawn by a hundred oxen along steep mountain roads. It was encased in a wooden structure and propelled on large logs of wood placed underneath. This engineering feat was only equalled by the Egyptians in handling Cleopatra’s Needle, /now or the Thames Embankment in London. It is the largest and most beautiful piece of marble ever quarried imjtaly and is of a [rale grey hue.