Today, 25 March, two halls of the Farnesina Building, the seat of the Foreign Ministry, will respectively be named: “Sala Filippo de Grenet e degli Eroi e Valorosi” and “Sala dei Trattati europei di Roma”. It is an initiative with a high symbolic value. The ceremony will be opened by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Enzo Moavero Milanesi, and attended by the President of the Senate, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati and by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
From now on, the hall named after the “European Treaties of Rome” will display the original text of the ‘Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community’ signed in Rome in 1957. The room will also showcase the original texts of the subsequent treaties that amended it: the Single European Act of 1986, the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 and the subsequent Lisbon Treat of 2007. The hall is normally crossed by the people attending meetings with the Minister and can be visited on the Ministry’s Open Day, when the Farnesina is open to the public. It will now be possible to see the founding texts of the European integration process and of the present-day European Union. The naming of the hall significantly takes place on the 62nd anniversary of the signing of the EEC Treaty, to commemorate the event and affirm the Europeanist vocation of the Italian Republic.
Dedicating a hall to Filippo de Grenet and to the “Eroi e Valorosi” (“The Heroes and the Brave”) means paying a moved and grateful homage to all the personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who, over the years, distinguished themselves for their particularly courageous and self-sacrificing acts, in times of war or peace. . We are commemorating about 200 heroes because they have honoured our Homeland and have been awarded gold, silver and bronze medals for civil and military valour. The hall was chosen because it normally hosts events that involve the personnel of the Foreign Ministry and it will now have a marble bust of Consul de Grenet situated in the middle of the room. The young Italian diplomat was barbarously murdered at the Fosse Ardeatine on 24 March 1944 and, by virtue of his conduct, was awarded a gold gallantry medal: a sublime example of heroism and loyalty to the loftiest values that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs admiringly wishes to renew the solemn memory of on the 75th anniversary of the horrible massacre.
