Editor's note: Sign up to CNN Travel Unlocking Italy Newsletter for insider information on Italy's most beloved destinations and lesser-known regions to plan your best trip. Plus, we'll get you in the mood before you go with movie suggestions, reading lists, and Stanley Tucci recipes.
cnn
—
June 1940. Italy enters World War II and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini quickly sets about building air raid shelters at Villa Torlonia, his grand residence in Rome since 1929.
In total, the fascists build three underground structures to protect Mussolini and his family. The first, in 1940, was an adaptation of an old winery on the Villa Torlonia land. A year later, an air raid shelter was built in the basement of the Casino Nobile, one of the buildings on the villa's grounds. Its rooms were lined with 120 centimeters (four feet) of reinforced concrete, and had anti-gas doors and an air purification and exchange system.
Meanwhile, as the war progressed, Mussolini planned an armored bunker, located underground in front of the Casino Nobile.
Located six meters (almost 20 feet) underground, it was built in the shape of a cross with corridors 15 meters (almost 50 feet) long and 2.5 meters (8 feet) wide, reinforced with four-meter (four-foot) reinforced concrete. 13 feet) thick. Construction began in December 1942 and the bunker was unfinished (it lacked watertight doors, a final ventilation system and a bathroom) when the dictator was arrested on July 25, 1943.
The bunker was first opened to the public in 2006, but closed two years later, before undergoing temporary openings in subsequent years.
Following its last closure in 2021, it has now reopened for guided tours of the air raid shelter and bunker. The complex now includes a multimedia exhibition about Rome during World War II, civilian air attack systems, and the series of 51 Allied bombing raids that hit the city between July 1943 and May 1944. There is a special focus on the bombing of San Francisco in 1943. Lorenzo neighborhood, which is believed to have killed more than 3,000 civilians. 50-minute guided tours take visitors underground and through the exhibition, before experiencing a recreated air raid on Mussolini's unfinished bunker.
The tours, which are not accessible to people with mobility issues, last 50 minutes and run from Friday to Sunday, with a tour in English every Saturday at 11am. Tickets cost 12 euros ($12.80) and can be reserved online.
