ROME • Deep beneath the historic Villa Torlonia, where Benito Mussolini lived for nearly two decades, a wine cellar repurposed in 1941 as a bunker to protect the Fascist leader was recently opened to the public.I note this story because there are ancient Jewish catacombs underneath Mussolini's villa and since at least 2004 there have been plans to restore them and open them to the public alongside a Holocaust museum. It's been more than two and a half years since I heard anything about them, but this article says the following:
Even in a city stratified with centuries of history, the damp underground space is a telling sign of how deeply Italy's relatively recent past can stay buried.
The opening of the bunker last autumn was the latest step in the ongoing restoration of the spraw- ling villa compound, which the aristocratic Torlonia family rented to Mussolini and his family from 1925 until his arrest and death in 1943.
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The villa's grounds also contain ancient Jewish catacombs discovered in 1918 and not open to the public. It was at Villa Torlonia in 1938 that Mussolini announced racial laws stripping Jews of citizenship and removing them from many professions.So the Holocaust museum is still planned, but I've not heard anything about the opening of the catacombs for some time. As I said before, I hope they are still on the agenda.
The Casino Nobile now features a small museum dedicated to the Roman School of anti-Fascist artists active between the 1920s and 1940s, including the writer and painter Carlo Levi.
Today, plans are in the works to build a Holocaust museum in a lot adjacent to the villa.
Background here and links.
