Monument to the Lion of Judah patriot and national hero. The work was made by the French sculptor Georges Gardet in 1930, on the occasion of the coronation of Emperor Hailé Selassié on November 2, 1930. At the end of the so-called March of the Iron Will (in italian: "Marcia della ferrea volontà") that led to the occupation of Addis Ababa by the Italian army, the statue was transported to Rome, Italy in 1935 at the end of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. The Lion of Judah sculpture was placed just beyond Piazza dei Cinquecento, under the obelisk of the Italian Heroes of the Battle of Dogali
Monument to the Lion of Judah on May 8, 1937, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the proclamation of the Italian Empire. On June 15, 1938 the young Eritrean Zerai Deres made a protest against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in front of the monument. Brandishing a scimitar, he wounded several onlookers and was shot by soldiers. He was arrested by the fascist militia and imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital in Sicily, where he died in 1945. For this gesture Zerai Deres is considered a national hero both in Eritrea and Ethiopia. The Lion of Judah statue remained in Rome until the 1960s, when