Description In 1917, the Maltese sculptor Antonio Sciortino (1879–1947), based in Rome, conceived a grand project entitled the ‘Temple of the British Empire to the Unknown Soldier’. He claimed that the concept of memorialising the unknown soldier was his original idea. Sciortino’s conceived his scheme as a potent symbolic representation of the loss of human life in war. The project occupied Sciortino for several years, during which time he produced hundreds of sketches and architectural drawings and a scale architectural model of the complex. Sciortino initially proposed the project to be built in London. After the British authorities rejected the project, Sciortino promoted it in the United States. However, the scheme expressed on a grand monumental scale was destined to remain an unrealised architectural vision on paper. In as much, the project was Sciortino’s highly personal and, to a certain extent, megalomaniacal utopian dream. His monumental scheme, rooted in the timeless classical tradition, is self-assertive and proud. It does not glorify war but invites contemplation. It dignifies the wasteful sacrifice of young men, memorialising them in a grand and breathtaking architectural conception.
