What do we talk when we talk about Italy? Beyond the Modi-Meloni (now Team Melodi) memes, appropriations of food, and the deluge of travel bucket list items, there exists a country that knows how not to stay trapped in its history. Or the historical mistakes, to be precise. On July 25, 1943, Benito Mussolini, the man responsible for some of the worst crimes against his countrymen, was overthrown and less than three months later, Italy officially switched sides in the Second World War.
Rome was saved, literally and metaphorically. In a three-storey flat on Via Tasso, at least 3,000 men and women were incarcerated, interrogated, tortured, and even killed during the Second World War. Their crime could be anything from being a partisan, a Jew, a thinker, or protesting peacefully or otherwise against the wanton killings in the streets by the fascists.
If nothing else, they could have just been an annoyance to the fascist. The flat is now a memorial to the fallen citizens who did not have a chance against this killing machine. Their ‘relics’— photographs, blood-soaked clothes, messages scratched on the walls by the prisoners or sewn into the hems of clothes delivered by their relatives, fake identity cards to hide their identity are all on display in this museum exuding a strong ‘never again’ vibe.
The worst of this condemned lot were the Jewish partisans who were also thinkers. This flat, now called Museo Storico Della Liberazione (Liberation Historical Museum), is not v.