Monument to Franceschi

On 23 January 1973, a student assembly was held at Bocconi University during which, contrary to what had happened in the past, people from outside the university were prevented from participating. This ban was enforced by deploying riot police, thus creating considerable tensions with radicalized students that led to clashes late in the evening. The dynamics are controversial to this day (it seems that a Molotov cocktail was initially thrown at a police van), but shots were certainly fired by the police. Roberto Piacentini, an industrial worker who was taking part in the demonstration, was wounded in the lung but survived, while model Bocconi student Roberto Franceschi was hit by a bullet in the head and, after falling into a coma, died on 30 January.  

In January 1974, a committee was established, composed of artists (including Alik Cavaliere, owner of a local atelier), the Franceschi family (with Roberto’s mother Lydia actively participating), student representatives and representatives of the labor movement who together decided to install a monument in the memory of Roberto Franceschi. The proposals of over 40 artists were examined and at the end of a long debate they first opted for an abstract work and finally for a concrete object employed in industrial work. The artists Vitale Petrus and Marzulli proposed using a billet where a worker had fallen dead in the Breda factory of Sesto San Giovanni, but in the end the idea supported by Enzo Mari, Paolo Galleani, Ezio Rovida and Vitale Petrus prevailed: a steel hammer used in the metalworking industry. Seven meters tall and weighing 50 tons, this piece of machinery had been manufactured in Germany in 1941, transported to the Soviet Union, then used in various European countries before ending up in a warehouse in Arluno where it had been located after its decommissioning.  

Bocconi University, contacted by the committee, made it clear that it would not oppose the placing of the sculpture, and so on 16 April 1977 (to also commemorate the killing of student activist Claudio Varalli by extreme-right FUAN militants in 1975) the steel hammer was transported and placed in the spot on the street where Roberto Franceschi had been shot: the operation was not without difficulty, since it was necessary to prepare a base of inert materials to ensure that the monument would not collapse into the ground.  

The work was officially acknowledged as a city monument on 23 January 2013 at a ceremony attended by Rector Andrea Sironi and Milan mayor Giuliano Pisapia. 

The legal proceedings for Roberto’s death were exceedingly long. Finally in 1999, a civil court ordered the Ministry of the Interior to compensate the family, which used this sum to fund the Roberto Franceschi Foundation, active in promoting research in the social sciences. Bocconi University has named the largest classroom in Via Sarfatti 25 after Franceschi, and, in collaboration with the Franceschi Foundation, it organizes an event every year to commemorate Roberto and present the Foundation's scholarships and initiatives.