The Tempio Monumentale was designed by the Modena architect Domenico Barbanti in collaboration with Achille Casanova and dedicated to St. Joseph. It was built as a monument to those that fell in the Great War; the first stone was laid on December the 8th 1923. King Vittorio Emanuele III and the Archbishop Natale Bruni, benefactor who conceived the monument were present at the laying of the first stone. There are the names of 7,300 citizens of Modena who fell during the First World War and are sculpted in the crypt, on the pilasters and on the walls.
