It was August 14, 2018 when the Morandi bridge in Genoa collapsed during a violent storm. At 11.36, cars and trucks fell in just a few seconds along with tens of meters of viaduct. 43 people died, over 500 were forced to leave their homes and an entire city found itself faced with a wound that, eight years later, has still not closed. Today, 14 August 2026, Genoa commemorates the eighth anniversary of the tragedy. But this time the commemoration comes less than a month after a step that has been awaited for years: the first degree sentence of the trial on the collapse, pronounced by the Court of Genoa on 16 July.
“There is a before and after 14 August 2018, the collapse of the Morandi bridge is a tragedy that marked a watershed in the history of Genoa and will continue to be so. Our task, as institutions, is to keep the memory alive” declared the mayor of Genoa Silvia Salis at Palazzo Tursi at the inauguration of the photographic exhibition on the collapse of the Morandi bridge. To remain alive and sharp, memory needs stubborn voices that never tire of telling stories.”
And the victims’ families are launching a proposal that tries to transform what remains of the bridge into something that will continue to speak to future generations: a “widespread museum” of the rubble.
The rubble could return to the sites of the tragedy
Concrete blocks, strands and fragments of the old viaduct were for years mainly exhibits of a huge judicial investigation. Now they might take on a different meaning. The Committee of Relatives of Victims of the Morandi Bridge proposes to place some remains of the infrastructure in the municipalities of origin of the 43 people who died that day, creating a network of small memorials scattered across Italian territory. The objective is simple and very powerful: to make that rubble a permanent warning, so that what happened is not forgotten and above all cannot be repeated.
«An embryonic idea for now», explained the president of the Committee Egle Possetti, specifying that the project should lead to the creation of memorials in the cities and towns from which the victims came.
Next to each fragment there could be plaques, information panels or interactive tools capable of telling not only who the dead people were, but also what happened to the bridge, what emerged from the investigations and the evolution of the trial. Therefore, not rubble displayed as simple artefacts, but pieces of a collective history. Objects capable of reminding us that behind every large infrastructure there are decisions, controls, maintenance and responsibilities that have concrete consequences on people’s lives. The most important finds from a historical and judicial point of view will remain in the Morandi Bridge Memorial, built in the area under the new Genova San Giorgio bridge. Among these is the so-called “exhibit 132”, the terminal portion of a stay of pier 9, the one that collapsed on 14 August 2018. It was one of the central elements of the investigations into the failure of the viaduct.
The Memorial would thus become the central point of a memory which, in the intentions of the family, could however go beyond the borders of Genoa and reach all those places where eight years ago they lost a son, a mother, a father, a partner, a friend.
The sentence came almost eight years later
This anniversary inevitably has a different meaning even for what happened a few weeks ago. On 16 July 2026, at the end of a trial that began in July 2022, the Court of Genoa pronounced the first degree sentence: 32 of the 57 defendants were convicted. Among them the former CEO of Autostrade per l’Italia Giovanni Castellucci, who was given a 12-year prison sentence.
The proceedings were one of the most impressive in recent years: 284 hearings, 282 witnesses, four experts and an enormous amount of documentation collected and analysed. Autostrade per l’Italia and Spea had already exited the trial through a plea bargain worth almost 30 million euros.
Today, like every August 14th, let’s stop for a moment. For the 43 names that are not just a number, but people, stories, affections. So that no one forgets. And so that it never happens again.
