Right around the southeast corner of the former Royal Palace in Torino stands an old Roman gate, repurposed on the west side into the Palazzo Madama, the first Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and today a museum of art dating back to the late Middle Ages.  The museum opens up onto Piazza Castello to the west with a statue dedicated to the army of Sardinia which played a significant role in the Risorgimiento.  On the east side, past the two remaining Roman towers, stands a large monument mounted by two groups of four soldiers with a large, somewhat brooding man standing alone, fists clenched, looking to the east.  This man depicted is Emanuele Filiberto Vittorio Eugenio Alberto Genova Giuseppe Maria di Savoia, Duke of Aosta and a a cousin of Italy’s king Victor Emanuel III.  

Filiberto, during World War One, led the Italian Third Army against the Austro-Hungarian forces on the Carso for two years from June 1915 until October 1917.  Erected between 1933 and 1937 after the general’s death in Torino in 1931, the bronze statue stands cast from four captured artillery pieces, the “Statue in a Coat” – “statua in un cappotto”.  The monument memorializes the “Undefeated Duke” of the “Undefeated Third Army” – “la armatta invitta”.