{"id":15690,"date":"2026-10-28T12:40:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T12:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/?p=15690"},"modified":"2026-10-28T12:40:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T12:40:21","slug":"princess-romanework-haile-selassie-daughter-turin-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/15690","title":{"rendered":"Turin Names a Garden for Princess Romanework, Haile Selassie’s Eldest Daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Italian city of Turin has named a public garden after Princess Romanework Haile Selassie, the eldest daughter of Emperor Haile Selassie<\/a>. Romanework died in Turin as a prisoner of fascist Italy in 1940, when she was only 27 years old.<\/p>\n

The garden lies between Via Uffreduzzi and Via Arduino in the Filadelfia neighborhood, in the city’s eighth district. It received her name on Wednesday, October 14, the day she died 86 years ago, the local news site Torino Oggi<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

A Ceremony in Filadelfia<\/h2>\n

The idea came from Abdullahi Ahmed, a member of the Turin city council, according to the Amharic edition of The Reporter<\/a>. The paper said the naming was presented as a step to bring a hidden history into the open and to build awareness against colonial rule.<\/p>\n

Maria Grazia Grippo, the president of the city council and of its street-naming commission, spoke at the ceremony. So did Amare Dawit, the vice president of the Association of Ethiopians and Their Friends in Piedmont, the region around Turin. The writer Stefano Garzaro and Liuba Forte, the president of the Panafricando association, also spoke, Torino Oggi reported.<\/p>\n

Students from the Passoni art high school also took part, Corriere della Sera<\/a> reported. They came at the invitation of Decolonizing Frames, a Turin festival of short films about colonialism and migration. One student told the crowd that racism is still present among people today.<\/p>\n

Grippo said no naming can repair what history broke in the life of a woman taken from her family and her land, according to Torino Oggi. Still, she said, giving her name to the garden is a form of justice. Forte said she hoped the garden would be a place to share a coffee and to leave borders outside the gate.<\/p>\n

The Emperor’s Eldest Daughter<\/h2>\n

Romanework was born in 1906 in the Ethiopian calendar, which is 1913 or 1914 in the European calendar. She was the first child of Haile Selassie and Woizero Woinitu Amede, The Reporter wrote. Her name joins the Amharic words for pomegranate and gold, and Italian writers translate it as “golden pomegranate.”<\/p>\n

She married Dejazmach Beyene Merid, the governor of Bale province in southern Ethiopia, and the couple had four sons. When Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, Romanework was 22 years old.<\/p>\n

Italian troops entered Addis Ababa in May 1936, and the emperor left for exile in England with most of the royal family, Corriere della Sera wrote. Romanework did not go with them. She stayed in Ethiopia beside her husband, who led fighters against the occupation.<\/p>\n

Beyene kept fighting into early 1937. The British historian Richard Pankhurst<\/a> wrote that he was taken prisoner on February 20, 1937, and was shot at once. The Reporter said Romanework was captured along with hundreds of other Ethiopians and sent to Italy with her four sons.<\/p>\n

Prisoners on Asinara<\/h2>\n

The family was first held on Asinara, a small island off the coast of Sardinia. Mussolini’s government held 291 Ethiopian nobles and officials there, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica<\/a> reported in 2025. The aim was to stop the emperor from seeking British help against Italy, the paper said.<\/p>\n

Gianfranco Massidda, whose father was a telegraph operator on Asinara, met the princess there as a child in 1937. A University of Turin history project recorded his memories, and The Reporter’s English edition quoted them<\/a>. “A very beautiful woman. Melancholic,” he said. He remembered her on the paths of Cala Reale, “always accompanied by a lady-in-waiting and under the watchful but discreet eye of the carabinieri,” the Italian military police.<\/p>\n

Life on the island was hard. Her youngest son, Gideon, died there at the age of two, Corriere della Sera reported, and Romanework became ill.<\/p>\n

\"Old
Cala Reale, the bay on the island of Asinara, Sardinia, Italy, where Ethiopian prisoners were held in 1937, photographed on October 6, 2024 (Alexkom000 \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Help came from Monsignor Gaudenzio Barlassina, the head of the Consolata Missions, a Catholic missionary order based in Turin. He had worked in Ethiopia for 16 years and knew the princess when he saw her on Asinara, the Sermig<\/a> magazine wrote. With support from Queen Elena of Italy, Romanework and her three surviving sons were placed with the Consolata sisters in Turin.<\/p>\n

La Repubblica also reported a doubt about a famous old photograph that many people believed showed Romanework. Yewinshet Beshawured, who was held on Asinara as a child, visited the island in 2025 at the age of 93. She told the paper that the young woman in the picture is Senedu Gebru, a writer who served in the resistance.<\/p>\n

A Grave Marked “To a Mother”<\/h2>\n

In the autumn of 1940, Romanework fell ill with tuberculosis and went to the nearby Molinette hospital. Her sons could see her only through the large hospital windows, Corriere della Sera wrote. She became a Catholic shortly before she died on October 14, 1940.<\/p>\n

She was buried at the Monumental Cemetery of Turin. For many years her tomb carried only three Italian words, “A una mamma,” which mean “To a mother.” Her name was added in Italian and Amharic only in recent years, the Sermig magazine reported.<\/p>\n

Corriere della Sera also followed the lives of her sons. Her eldest son, Getachew, died of tuberculosis in Turin on February 22, 1944, and lies beside her. The two others, Merid and Samson, went home to Ethiopia after the Second World War.<\/p>\n

Her story also has gaps in the written record. The emperor told his life story in an autobiography, My Life and Ethiopia’s Progress. The Reporter’s English edition noted that its Amharic and English editions differ in what they say about Romanework and her father’s grief at her death.<\/p>\n

A Request Still Waiting<\/h2>\n

Ethiopia has asked for the princess’s body to be returned to Addis Ababa, The Reporter’s Amharic edition said. The paper added that questions about it have also been raised in parliament. Her body still lies in Turin, and La Repubblica wrote in 2025 that the requests had received no answer.<\/p>\n

Professor Shiferaw Bekele, a historian at Addis Ababa University, told The Reporter that he hopes the naming will have its biggest effect on Italian society. He said Italy has never publicly admitted, in parliament or in other national institutions, the wrongs it committed in Africa, or asked for forgiveness.<\/p>\n

“I hope it will help the Italians to admit in public the crimes they committed in the colonial era and to ask for forgiveness,” Shiferaw said in Amharic. He added that he hopes the recognition will encourage more research and widen the understanding of young scholars, first of all those in Turin.<\/p>\n

Ethiopians in Piedmont marked the naming in their own way. The Association of Ethiopians and Their Friends in Piedmont invited the community to a celebration at the garden on Sunday, October 18, The Reporter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Italian city of Turin has named a public garden after Princess Romanework Haile Selassie, the eldest daughter of Emperor Haile Selassie. Romanework died in Turin as a prisoner of fascist Italy in 1940, when she was only 27 years old. The garden lies between Via Uffreduzzi and Via Arduino in the Filadelfia neighborhood, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4,735,420],"tags":[888,644,679,811,807,889,812,886,887],"class_list":["post-15690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-arts-and-entertainment","category-lifestyle","category-news","tag-asinara","tag-ethiopian-culture","tag-ethiopian-heritage","tag-ethiopian-history","tag-haile-selassie","tag-italian-occupation","tag-italy","tag-princess-romanework","tag-turin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9OJMY-454","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/featured-turin-monumental-cemetery-2013.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15691,"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15690\/revisions\/15691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tewnet.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}