Site RSI Leaders Execution

Here in Dongo, where the main SS340 road runs along the northwest side of Lake Como, the same balustrade still stands as it did on 28 April 1945, when 15 senior members of the RSI (Repubblica Sociale Italiana) were executed by a firing squad.
There is an information board next to the balustrade, which runs along the waterfront of Lake Como. The site is on the other side of the main road from the town's central square, Plazza Paracchini, named after local partisan leader Guilo Paracchini, who was shot on 24 April 1945 by members of the fascist paramilitary Black Brigade in the mountains above Dongo. Also on the other side of the square is the Palazzio Manzi, which houses the End of War Museum. Here you will find more information about World War II, the local resistance and fascists, the execution and, of course, the capture of Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci and her family.
The other high-ranking fascist leaders, including ministers, who were captured in nearby Musso on 27 April were taken to the ornate Sala D'Oro in the Palazzio Manzi to be detained. Two high-ranking partisan officers had arrived from Milan with orders from the Committee for the Liberation of Northern Italy that all high-ranking people who had helped establish the Italian Socialist Republic should be put to death. So the condemned were brought across the crowded square to be shot dead. The balustrade still bears the marks of some gunshots fired around 5pm on 28 April 1945.
Claretta Petacci's brother Mercello Petacci tried to flee, but was shot when he jumped into Lake Como. The bodies of the executed were taken to Piazzale Loretto in Milan along with the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress, forming an infamous end to the Italian fascist saga.

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Source

• Text: Ian Paterson
• Photos: Ian Paterson
• http://www.museofineguerradongo.it/en/piazza-paracchini-the-lakefront/