In the heart of Valpolicella, precisely along the access road to the San Giorgio cemetery, stands a work of art that is at once homage, memory and reflection: the Via Crucis dei Lapicidi. Inaugurated on 13 April 2014, this extraordinary sculptural installation is the result of a collaboration between the sculptor Matteo Cavaioni, the architect and artist Libero Cecchini, and Beatrice Mariotto, former director of the Ambrosian School of Art for twenty years.

The work consists of sixteen local stone tiles, carved on open book-shaped supports. Each tile is a carved page of local history, a station of the Passion of Christ reinterpreted in the light of the tradition of quarrymen, stonemasons, sculptors and entrepreneurs who have modelled not only the stone but also the cultural and social identity of the Ambrosian territory.

The Via Crucis dei Lapicidi (Stations of the Cross) opens with an unpublished station, the sixteenth, dedicated to the birth of the ‘Paolo Brenzoni’ School of Art, founded in 1868 by the count of the same name to offer local stonemasons professional training and social improvement. This first panel becomes the key to understanding the entire work: not only the Passion of Christ, but also that of the men and women who contributed to the growth of the community with their hands and sacrifice.

The fifteen traditional Stations of the Cross are reinterpreted with a strong emotional and contemporary charge. In Station I, Jesus condemned to death, we find a stonemason Christ against the backdrop of the quarries in Vermont, USA, where many art school alumni emigrated in the early 20th century. Some of them never returned, crushed by the cold and silicosis: the stone that gave work was also the stone that took life.

The 7th station, Jesus falls for the second time, recalls the tragedy of 1927 in San Giorgio, when a truck loaded with workers and marble blocks plunged into an escarpment, killing eight workers. The marble, symbol of toil and beauty, here also becomes a memory of mourning, carved so as not to forget.

In the eighth station, Jesus no longer meets pious women, but the women of the stone workers who fell at work: mothers, sisters, daughters, caught in the gesture of grief and prayer. A powerful vision, which brings the figure of the suffering Christ closer to that of the worker sacrificed on the altar of progress.

The 11th station, Jesus nailed to the cross, also takes on a new visual power: around the crucifix, the lifeless bodies of the stone workers who died in the cave-ins, lying on wooden planks, in a tragic and poignant homecoming.

In the 14th station, Jesus buried in the sea of migrants, the figure of Christ is immersed in the blue of the sea: a symbolic image, linking the Passion to the suffering of those who, like our emigrants of yesterday or migrants of today, cross the sea in search of hope and all too often find death.

The municipal administration of Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella recognised the high cultural and symbolic value of the work, which is configured as a true ‘path of memory’. A book carved in stone that unites art, history, faith and local identity. The Via Crucis dei Lapicidi (Stations of the Cross) is not just a religious itinerary: it is a secular path of gratitude, a monument to the dignity of work, to daily toil, to collective memory. A tribute to those who have sculpted, with calloused hands and strong hearts, the history of Valpolicella.