Unveiled in October 2003, this sculpture indicates the burial place of local writer Giorgio Bassani in the eastern part of the Jewish Cemetery in Via delle Vigne, Ferrara. The Municipality of Ferrara and Ferrara Arte commissioned sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro and architect Piero Sartogo to complete the piece. Placed on the lawn that surrounds Bassani's tomb, Pomodoro created the bronze stele according to the project’s overall design, which was created by Studio Sartogo in Rome. A tombstone seems to rise upwards from the horizontal base, which is also in bronze, creating the ideal connection between earth and the heavens. It is engraved in a series of geometric traces that seem to echo the typographical characters of a typewriter, or even Bassani's minute handwriting, while the larger elements on the surface recall Hebrew characters. Surrounding the tomb is a semicircle designed by Sartogo, almost as if embracing, while defining, the space.

The monument to Giorgio Bassani is found near the tombs of his paternal grandparents, Angelo Bassani and Jenny Hannau, and his parents, Enrico Bassani and Dora Minerbi. The tomb of his maternal grandfather, Cesare Minerbi, and his uncle Giacomo and his family are found on along the entry road.

Paola Bassani

‘The sculpture...isn’t placed above my father, who is buried next to it and thus, as he wanted, nothing stands between him and the sky’. (Paola Bassani, La Nuova Ferrara, 5 March 2012)