Rome - SIPO HQ

After the Germans occupied northern and central Italy on September 11, 1943, the German Security Police (SIPO) installed their headquarters on Via Tasso in central Rome. The premises had previously been used by the cultural department of the German embassy. SIPO’s chief in Rome was Obersturmbannführer, Herbert Kappler, and he rebuilt several rooms and adapted them for interrogation purposes in order to force out concessions or confessions of the interrogated. When the Americans liberated Rome, June 4, 1944, the headquarters was taken intact and the prisoners who had not been taken away by the SS were released.