Connoisseur of War

"Bridges, ships and heavy artillery are sometimes expensive." says Diego de Henriquez. "Castles, on the other hand, are relatively cheap. Sometimes even free."

De Henriquez a stocky, fiftyish Italian archaeologist, should know, for he is the curator of one of the world's most unusual museums, devoted solely to war and its bulky artifacts. As other pack rats yearn for stamps, china cygnets, or shrunken human heads, De Henriquez cherishes the debris of the battlefield. Over five decades Collector de Henriquez has spent $12 million of his own money amassing some 100,000 items, ranging from Stone Age spears to Jet Age missiles, from medieval Japanese muskets to Italian army glockenspiels.

Born in Trieste, De Henriquez got his passion from childhood musings over the battle souvenirs of his Portuguese ancestors, who for 900 years had fought in many European armies (two were Austrian field marshals). Too young for World War I, De Henriquez fascinatedly watched the bombardment of Trieste from his roof while others cowered in cellars, at war's end begged and bought heaps of surplus materiel.

To study ancient weapons he decided to become an archaeologist, steadily enlarged his collection with money from his wealthy banker-father. By 1924 he had enough to establish his own museum in Trieste, wangled a small subsidy from the Italian government. In 1937 he bought a strategically located house in Trieste where he could photograph any future bombardment. It came when the Allies attacked the German garrison of the city in the closing months of World War II. "I had to wait seven years," he gloats, "but it was worth it."

As a wartime weapons consultant to the Italian armed forces, De Henriquez was not content to observe just one side; he was constantly slipping across the lines to see how the other side operated. He was arrested 18 times, once sent before a Yugoslav partisan firing squad: "I kept laughing and telling them I was a professor, and finally they let me go." To De Henriquez, Italy's collapse was a dream come true: "Capitulations are wonderful for collectors. Generals are busy fleeing, and nobody bothers about maps and documents."

Attending as many surrenders as possible, De Henriquez snapped up thousands of small arms, plus three bridges, seven airplanes, four small submarines, eight ships, three armored trains, several concrete pillboxes, and a two-ton unexploded aerial bomb that he defused himself. His current collection includes almost every conceivable kind of military firearm of the past 500 years, an "iron maiden" and other torture instruments, 20 old castles and forts scattered across Italy.

Last year De Henriquez got government permission to house his mushrooming stockpile in three abandoned army barracks in southeast Rome. To move it all from Trieste is fast becoming a logistical feat worthy of Hannibal himself. Last week his rented Roman villa was stuffed with incoming crates. He planned to fly some of his airplanes down under their own power. His chief problem: how to man and sail his naval destroyer around Italy, and to find a place to moor it when it arrived.

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