The Italian Chapel
Though one of the least known of Orkney ’s attractions, the Italian Chapel is one of the most moving. Also known as ‘the miracle of camp 60’, the chapel is a fascinating feat of ingenuity and a real tale of the triumph of the human spirit.
During World War II, the tiny island of Lambholm on which the chapel sits, was home to several hundred Italian POWs captured during the North Africa Campaign. They were sent here to work on the Churchill Barriers, causeways linking the islands to the east of Scapa Flow. Imprisoned in an environment and landscape that would have been totally alien to the olive skinned Mediterraneans, they managed to create a little piece of home to lift their spirits.
Outside the chapel stands a statue of St George slaying the dragon built from a barbwire framework covered in cement, symbolising the battle of the soul at the heart of the chapel’s creation. The miracle is in the ingenuity and artistry with which the prisoners were able to take the simple materials they had and build a chapel with all the intricacy and beauty of any you’ll see in Italy. The Chapel was constructed from two Nissen huts and the prisoners used whatever scrap metal, concrete, papier-mâché, plaster and paint they had available, to decorate the interior of the chapel and create a front façade. The chapel features wood obtained from a wreaked ship for the tabernacle, melted tin cans were used to make the ornate sanctuary screen for the alter, painted glass depicting St Francis of Assisi and St Catherine of Sienna and behind the alter, a lovingly painted masterpiece of the Madonna and Child by the artistic mastermind behind the chapel Domenico Chiocchetti. This was based on a picture his mother gave him that he had carried throughout the war.
When the war was over, rather than be repatriated Chiocchetti stayed to put the finishing touches to the chapel before finally returning to his home village of Moena in the Dolomites. In 1960 he returned to Orkney to help restore the chapel, since then the people of Moena and Orkney have shared a common bond in the miracle of camp 60.
