The story of this place
This ordinary Milan square holds one of Italy's darkest and most symbolic scenes. On 10 August 1944, the Nazis and Fascists executed 15 anti-Fascist partisans here and left the bodies on display as a warning. Eight months later, after partisans captured and shot Benito Mussolini and his mistress Claretta Petacci on 28 April 1945, their corpses—with those of other Fascist leaders—were trucked to Piazzale Loreto on 29 April and dumped at the same spot in an act of grim retribution. The bodies were beaten, then hung upside down from the girders of an Esso petrol station before a vast, furious crowd. The image flashed around the world and marked the violent end of Italian Fascism.