The Bridge of the Sirenette is a lowered arch bridge in central Milan, remembered in the account as the hidden vantage point from which Albino Volpi threw a bomb at a socialist procession on November 18, 1919. The bridge’s cast-iron figures give the scene its distinctive setting, while its position above the route turns an otherwise ordinary crossing into a place from which one attacker could strike a crowd and vanish into darkness.

Setting and Approach

The bridge stands near Via San Damiano, where thousands of socialists were processing toward Avanti! headquarters after an electoral victory. The marchers had been streaming from Via del Verziere for several minutes; men, women, and children moved along the canal bank, singing and carrying flags. The bridge is close enough to overlook the procession, yet the lowered arch leaves Volpi alone above it, with only four cast-iron statues on the parapets for company. Each Sirenette holds an oar.

Volpi reached the bridge without being seen from the Arditi headquarters on Via Cerva. He climbed over the wall of Palazzo Visconti and crossed its garden, a route that took five minutes. At seven in the evening he stood on the bridge with two Thévenot bombs on his belt and a mother-of-pearl-handled dagger. His exposed face and upright, almost posed stance set him apart from the concealed approach he had just made.

The Attack

Volpi watched the procession for half an hour. As it paused beneath the windows of Avanti! to hear a speech by Serrati, the narrative gives the attack a close, deliberate sequence: Volpi removed the safety pin from one bomb, extended both arms, then let the spring-loaded device fly toward the crowd. The explosion ended the singing. Screams and cries from the wounded replaced the procession’s song, and the crowd scattered.

A contemporary account published in Corriere della Sera on November 18 described the attacker as an unknown stranger on the cast-iron bridge. It placed the explosion near the front of the procession and said fragments struck demonstrators from a distance of twenty or thirty yards. The report records the injured, companions rushing to help, and others pursuing the assailant before darkness hid him. Set beside the narrative’s identification of Volpi, the report preserves the gap between what was known publicly in the immediate aftermath and what the book presents to the reader.

Aftermath and Significance

From the bridge, Volpi looked down on the fleeing crowd and assessed its response to the blast. The scene contrasts the isolated figure above with thousands below: the bridge provides both a physical height and an observational position from which he can treat the people’s fear as a spectacle. The account says he held a second bomb after the first explosion; it does not describe what happened to it.

The location’s significance lies in this sharp reversal of the procession’s purpose. A public celebration moving toward a socialist rally becomes a scene of panic and injury through an attack launched from a quiet bridge. The four oar-bearing figures remain fixed above the route as the crowd breaks apart beneath them, giving the bridge a lasting place in the account of the violence.