The American Cemetery at Nettuno

On Thursday Alex and I visited the town of Nettuno, about an hour south of Rome. We visited several things there but I've broken the visit into installments. Here's the first installment, the American WWII cemetery at Nettuno. Nettuno is within sight of Anzio, which was the site of the Allied invasion of Italy in 1944 - the Italian equivalent of DDay. The cemetery contains the graves of 7,000 American soldiers who died in that invasion.

Here's the wrought iron entry to the memorial cemetery.


A glimpse of the grounds from the entrance. There's a fountain in the foreground, lots of greenery, and in the background, a memorial.


As we walked in we saw some of the rows of crosses off to our left, behind the fountain.


A shot of some water lillies in the pond.


I took lots of pictures of the crosses. They are arranged in such a way as to provide many interesting photo opportunities.


We walked among the graves until we found this grave of a soldier from our home state of North Carolina.


More crosses, stretching far out to the edge of the park.


We continued up the path to the memorial. As you can see by the lawn in front, the grounds were immaculately maintained (which I was glad to see).


Some more crosses, curving outwards.


This picture was taken inside the monument. The walls are covered with the names of the soldiers. This is just one section of one of the walls.


The courtyard inside the monument.


In the middle of the courtyard stood this 3-d map showing the route of the invasion, and subsequent advances by Allied forces.


A shot from the monument, looking out across the lawn towards the entrance.


Still more crosses.

A beautiful garden behind the monument. The hedges were shaped into the form of stars.

A shot of the back of the monument with the American flag flying to the side of it.

Alex standing on the ledge of the granite fountain at the end of the garden.

Last picture - the back of the monument, taken as we left the cemetery.