Rome - Villa Torlonia
Between 1925 and 1943, Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini and his family lived in a stylish villa called Casino Noble. The villa was located in a park called Villa Torlonia in central Rome and began to be built in the early nineteenth century by the banker Giovanni Torlonia. Mussolini rented the villa for the symbolic sum of one lire per year. With a possible war in mind, Mussolini had a shelter built in the garden, but later, in the war years, he built a larger bunker with several rooms adjacent to Casino Noble. Mussolini held both official and private events in the park. The wedding of his daughter Edda and Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s Secretary of State, was held there. The park also included various recreational activities to entertain guests, such as tennis and horse jumping/riding. After Rome was liberated in early June 1944, the villa was taken over by American troops who remained there until 1947.
Current status: Preserved with museum (2018).
Address: Via Nomentana 70, 00161 Rom.
Get there: Metro to Policlinico station.
Follow up in books: Hibbert, Christopher: Mussolini: The Rise and Fall of Il Duce (2008).
Casino Noble is 2018 a museum where the Mussolini years is included. Both shelters and bunker remain but cannot be visited. The bunker was somewhere around 2010 open for visitors but is nowadays closed. The park itself is open but is a bit worn down. A short walk from Villa Torlonia on Via Tolmino 6 in a hotel (Relais) there is a small interesting museum called, Museum and Allied Forces – Rome. The museum is run by the hotel owner and consists of all sorts of materials and equipment that the owner has collected over the years. When this was written in 2018, the owner’s ambition was to sell the museum.