Museo della Fine della Guerra

The Museum of the End of the War occupies the ground floor of Palazzo Manzi, Dongo’s neoclassical town hall. Its seven rooms use films, testimony and objects to present the final weeks of the Second World War in Italy, with particular attention to the events on Lake Como in April 1945.

Why it matters

On 27 April 1945, partisans stopped a German convoy between Musso and Dongo and found Benito Mussolini among those travelling with it. The detained fascist leaders were taken to Palazzo Manzi; several were executed in Dongo the following day. The museum presents these events within the wider history of the Resistance and the end of the war in Italy.

What to notice

The seven-room route moves from the events of liberation and the capture at Dongo to the Resistance, local factories and fascist forces, personal recollections, the liberation of Como and the partisans killed in the surrounding mountains. Multimedia material and testimony form a substantial part of the presentation. The adjacent Sala d’Oro preserves gilding, stuccoes and a ceiling fresco of Mount Parnassus; it was used to lay out local partisans shortly before the Dongo events.

Context and history

Palazzo Manzi was built in 1824 to a design by Pietro Gilardoni, a pupil of Pollak. Giuseppina Manzi donated it to the town in 1937, and it now houses municipal offices. The museum succeeds the Museo della Resistenza Comasca, which had been hosted in the palace since 1995. Its current presentation combines artefacts, documents, testimony and previously unreleased film footage with an interactive account of the events of 1945.