Atina

 

On Via Vittorio Emanuele II in Atina, a weathered stone plaque is set into the wall of a large building. There is nothing elaborate about it. Two words are still clearly visible: ASILO INFANTILE, and beneath them, in larger letters, BEATRICE.

 

It is the sort of inscription that is easily passed without a second thought. But who was Beatrice?

 

The answer leads to one of the more moving stories of nineteenth-century Atina.

 

Beatrice Visocchi was born into one of the town's most prominent families. Her father, Alfonso Visocchi, was a landowner and politician who entered the Italian parliament in 1865 and later became a senator. Her mother, Angelina Vecchiarelli, would become closely involved in education and charitable work in Atina.

 

Their private life was marked by almost unimaginable loss. Alfonso and Angelina had eight children. Seven died in childhood. Beatrice was the one who survived.

 

She reached adulthood and married Vincenzo Alessi, a professor of anatomy at the University of Messina. It must have seemed that the succession of tragedies that had accompanied the family for so long had finally come to an end. In 1884, at the age of twenty-three, Beatrice died in childbirth.

 

Alfonso later wrote of the effect these losses had had on them. His wife, he recalled, had come close to losing her reason. Religion helped them accept what had happened; charity gave them something to do with their grief.

 

They turned their attention to the children of Atina.

 

The nursery school that carried Beatrice's name eventually cared for around 230 children between the ages of four and seven. Alfonso and Angelina provided it with an annual income of 5,000 lire, intended to secure the education not only of the children then attending, but of future generations.

 

For Angelina in particular, the institution appears to have become something deeply personal. Contemporary accounts describe her giving the children of the Asilo the affection she had been unable to give to her own children. Her work extended further: a drawing school was established for the children of workers, along with Sunday recreation and educational outings, a low-cost kitchen for poorer families and improvements to the local hospital. Her contribution to childhood education and public instruction was eventually recognised nationally.

 

The Asilo also belonged to a wider tradition within the Visocchi family. During the nineteenth century they played an unusually important part in the economic and social development of Atina. They were involved in agriculture, wine production, industry and banking, while supporting schools and other institutions intended to improve local life. The first public school in Atina had been opened at the family's expense in 1857.

 

The little plaque on Via Vittorio Emanuele therefore tells more than a story of private grief. It belongs to a period when some of Atina's leading families saw wealth and public responsibility as closely connected.

 

There is, however, a small historical puzzle.

 

Local accounts date the inauguration of the new Asilo to 30 November 1889. The institution had certainly begun taking shape around this period: the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of Ivrea were present in Atina from 1886, when the nursery school was temporarily housed in Palazzo Sabatini.

 

Other evidence points firmly to 1899.

 

A study based on contemporary documentation records a solemn inauguration on 30 September 1899 and cites a commemorative booklet printed in Caserta that same year. More significantly, the present statute of the Fondazione Asilo Beatrice, approved by Regione Lazio, gives 30 September 1899 as the date on which Alfonso Visocchi and Angelina Vecchiarelli founded the institution. It became a recognised charitable body by royal decree in 1901.

 

Perhaps 1889 refers to an earlier stage in the development of the school and 1899 to the establishment of its permanent home. For now, the surviving sources leave the question open. It is a useful reminder that even the history written on plaques and information panels sometimes deserves another look.

 

What is certain is that the Asilo endured. For more than a century the building served childhood education, assisted for many years by the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of Ivrea. Later bequests increased its property, and in 2020 the old charitable institution was formally transformed into the Fondazione Asilo Beatrice, a private non-profit foundation. Its stated purpose remains education, training and assistance for children and young people, principally those of Atina and then the wider province of Frosinone.

 

Which makes its appearance today slightly puzzling.

 

The old Asilo stands closed and, from the street at least, appears empty. There may be practical or administrative reasons for this that are not visible to a passer-by. Still, it is difficult not to wonder about a building created expressly for the benefit of the community, belonging to a foundation whose purpose continues that tradition, but apparently no longer playing an obvious part in the daily life of the town.

 

Perhaps there is another chapter of its history still to be written.

 

For now, the faded inscription remains. Behind the name Beatrice lies the memory of a young woman who lived for only twenty-three years, and of two parents who responded to the loss of all their children by creating something for the children of others.