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The Museum of the Liberation in Via Tasso, Rome, is the symbolic place of the Nazi occupation of the Italian capital. The museum occupies an entire building which was used as a prison by the Sicherheitspolizei, the Nazi Security Police under the command of Herbert Kappler.
In Via Tasso, prisoners were detained and tortured. They had to face long interrogations, often including torture, to make them reveal hiding places, names and plans of the resistance. About two thousand women and men, partisans, soldiers and ordinary citizens passed through here. Many of the detainees were killed in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, on 24 March 1944, undertaken as a reprisal for the partisan attack in Via Rasella of the previous day.
The Museum of the Liberation is an impressive testimony of the occupation, because it largely remained as it was: the cells can be visited, they still have walled windows, the same doors and even the same switches used by the Gestapo. On the cells’ walls, you can still see graffiti by the prisoners, written with spikes and nails, containing messages of farewell to the beloved ones, of courage, of faith and love for the homeland. Visiting the Museum of Via Tasso is therefore a poignant and emotional experience, a trip to a dark moment of Italian history.