Rome commemorates the victims of 1944 massacre.
Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella on Tuesday will commemorate the 335 victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, 82 years after the mass killing took place in Rome.
On 24 March 1944 the Nazi forces then occupying the Italian capital carried out one of the most horrific atrocities against civilians during the second world war in Italy.
The Fosse Ardeatine, a former quarry near Via Appia Antica, was chosen as the site for the massacre of 335 people, in retaliation for a partisan attack on a column of marching German military police the day before.
Via Rasella attack
In a strike against the German forces occupying the city, Italian resistance fighters detonated a homemade bomb in a rubbish cart on Via Rasella, near Piazza Barberini, targeting a column of Bozen military police attached to the SS en route from Piazza del Popolo to its quarters in the Viminale, just off Via Nazionale.
The bomb was ignited when the patrol turned into the narrow, steep street that runs parallel to Via del Tritone, between the Traforo and Palazzo Barberini, just a short walk from the Trevi Fountain.
Out of the 156 men in the German unit, 28 were killed instantly, rising to 32 the next day and subsequently to 42.
Hitler
The SS command in Rome under Herbert Kappler immediately recommended reprisals, which were swiftly approved by the military authorities all the way up to Hitler.
Within 24 hours the German command ordered the Ardeatine massacre. The response was rapid and brutal, without the usual posting of notices offering to forgo reprisals if the bombers should give themselves up.
Innocent victims
Hundreds of innocent victims were rounded up immediately from Regina Coeli prison, from their homes and off the street in an attempt to reach a ten to one ratio for every German killed in the Via Rasella bombing.
They included professionals, military men, factory workers, a Catholic priest and several students. 75 of them were members of Rome’s Jewish community.
They were of all ages from 15 to 70, and all political persuasions, from monarchist army officers to communists. Some of them came from outside Rome.
On 24 March the 335 victims were taken in lorries outside the city by SS officers Erich Preibke and Karl Hass, divided into groups of five and shot in the back of the head.
When the officers discovered that, by mistake, five too many hostages had been rounded up, they decided to kill them anyway so that word of the massacre should not spread too soon.
The Fosse Ardeatine caves were then dynamited to seal them off and the bodies left to decay. It was not until more than a year later, after the Allied Liberation of Rome on 4 June 1944, that the caves were reopened and the bodies found.
Horrible sacrifice
After the war the site of the massacre was transformed into a museum, national mausoleum and sanctuary dedicated to the martyrs.
Fosse Ardeatine Mausoleum
A plaque on the wall of the cave reads: “Here we were brutally killed, victims of a horrible sacrifice. May from our sacrifice rise a better homeland and lasting peace among people.”
Numerous personal items belonging to the Fosse Ardeatine victims can be found in Rome’s Liberation Museum on Via Tasso, a former Gestapo headquarters where Jews and resistance figures were tortured during the Nazi occupation of Rome from 1943-1944.
Erich Priebke
Erich Priebke, the SS officer and Nazi war criminal, died in Rome aged 100 in October 2013.
Following his extradition from Argentina, Priebke had been jailed for life in 1998 for his role in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre.
However, due to his advanced age and ill health, his life sentence was reduced to house arrest which he served in Rome’s Balduina district.
Priebke’s death sparked a heated debate over what to do with his body, with the Vatican taking “unprecedented action” to block his funeral from being celebrated by any Catholic church in Rome.
The then mayor of the capital Ignazio Marino also vetoed a public burial in Rome, a city he described as “profoundly anti-fascist.”
In the end, Priebke’s funeral was held by the Society of Saint Pius X – an ultraconservative Catholic splinter group, some of whose members had in the past faced criticism over anti-Semitic leanings – at Albano Laziale, a town in the Castelli Romani about 25 km south of Rome.
During the service, police prevented clashes from breaking out between fascist sympathisers and anti-fascist protesters. Due to the protests, Priebke’s relatives were allegedly unable to access the church to attend the ceremony.
Afterwards the coffin containing Priebke’s body was seized by the Italian authorities and taken to a military base near Rome before being buried “in a secret location”.
Mirko Basaldella’s bronze gates at the entrance to the Fosse Ardeatine mausoleum.
Mausoleo Fosse Ardeatine
Construction work began in November 1947 and the mausoleum was inaugurated on 24 March 1949, five years after the massacre. The process to bury the victims was completed in 1951.
Located on Via Ardeatina 174, the mausoleum can be visited Mon-Fri 08.15-15.30 and Sat-Sun 08.15-16.30.
Ceremonies to mark 82nd anniversary of massacre
Italian president Sergio Mattarella will attended a commemoration ceremony at the Fosse Ardeatine mausoleum on Tuesday 24 March at 10.00.
The city of Rome will mark the anniversary by hosting a free public event in Piazza del Campidoglio on Tuesday at 15.00, with words, music and the unfurling of a large banner containing the names of the 335 victims of the massacre.
Cover image: President Sergio Mattarella at the Fosse Ardeatine Mausoleum on 22 March 2024. Photo Quirinale. Article first published 24 March 2021, updated 23 March 2026.
