The places of Memory
The city of Milan is home to several places that tell the story and have become a symbol of memory.
Below are some sites where you can remember the mistakes of the past, to ensure that they are never repeated in the future:
MemoMi it's a virtual place and it's there web tv dedicated to the history and memory of Milan, the first TV platform completely dedicated to a city.
With its archive of over 400 free-access video documentaries and podcasts, since 2014 it has preserved and produced stories dedicated to characters, events, places and curiosities of the Lombardy capital, in the belief that if you do not know your past and do not preserve its memory, there cannot be a future development in harmony with one's identity.
MemoMi was born with the desire to preserve and produce a heritage of culture, experiences, history, news and customs that tell the life of the "city that no longer exists" and on which to integrate the memory of the new people who populate the metropolis.
The “MemoMi – Memory of Milan” platform is sponsored by City of Milan and is conceived and promoted byCall Stories Association.
Since 2003 in Milan there has been an area that remembers the Righteous, that is, all those who opposed genocides and crimes against humanity, this space - located in Monte Stella - is the Garden of the Righteous of the whole world.
Every year, on the occasion of the Day of the Righteous (6 March), the garden hosts the dedication ceremony of new plaques to honor men and women who in every time and place have done good by saving lives, have fought in favor of human rights during the genocides and defended the dignity of the person by refusing to bow to totalitarianism and discrimination between human beings.
This open-air museum, which tells the story of the exemplary figures of the Righteous, can be visited at any time of the year.
On 25 April 2015 (on the occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation), the House of Memory was inaugurated in Milan, a public space open to the city which hosts the headquarters of 5 associations: ANED, AIVITER, ANPI, Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri and Piazza Fontana 12 December 1969.
This building - dedicated to the values of democracy and freedom, for which the city of Milan has fought in the last century - was wanted by the municipal administration as a monument to pay homage to those who fought against Nazi-fascism, the victims of terrorism and of the massacres of the second half of the 1900th century.
It is possible to visit the House of Memory to discover the program of exhibitions, conferences, performances and readings that animate the building throughout the months of the year.
The Shoah Memorial is located in an area of Milan Central Station, located at street level, under the ordinary railway tracks. This space was originally used for the movement of postal carriages, but between 1943 and 1945 it was the place where thousands of Jews and political opponents were loaded onto freight carriages and, once transported to the platform level above and positioned on the departure platform , were attached to convoys headed to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen and other extermination and concentration camps, or to Italian collection camps such as those of Fossoli and Bolzano.
Of all the places in Europe that were the scene of deportations, today the Memorial is the only one to have remained intact. It pays homage to the victims of extermination and represents a lively and dialectical context in which to actively rework the tragedy of the Shoah. A place of commemoration, therefore, but also a space to build the future and encourage civil coexistence. The Memorial aims to be, in fact, a place of study, research and discussion: a memorial for those who were there, for those who are there now, but above all for those who will come.
In via Ferdinando Gregorovius 15 there is a place that preserves the historical memory of Milan.
From municipal warehouse to archival, cultural and high-tech innovation hub. From 2016 to today, the Citadel of Archives has been the protagonist of a constant evolution which will find its maximum expression in the birth of the archive center "Mi.MA" - Milan Metropolitan Archive.
Currently the archive center houses approximately 80 linear kilometers of documents, with historical papers dating back to the Napoleonic era. The beating heart of the Citadel is represented by "Eustorgio", the archivist robot capable of automatically extracting the folders containing the documents.
The expansion project, entrusted to Mm spa, will be carried out through the construction of a new mechanized plant, bringing the entire Citadel complex to approximately 190 linear km of materials in total; which will thus make the Citadel the largest archive in Europe in a single site.
It is possible to visit the Citadel of the Archives and, subject to authorization issued by the Management of the Citadel and for exclusive study reasons; researchers or students can consult and possibly reproduce the freely consultable documents preserved in the deposits of the Citadel and the former Civic Archives.
A mosaic for Memory. In the streets of Milan you can find Stumbling Stones, in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the people killed for their religion, ethnicity, political ideas or sexual orientation.
The Stumbling Stones are a monumental European project to keep alive the memory of all those deported to Nazi concentration and extermination camps who did not return to their homes. The small square block of stone (10x10cm), covered with shiny brass, is placed in front of the door of the house in which the deportee had his last residence, of whom the Stone commemorates with an engraving:
- the name and surname;
- the date of birth;
- the date and place of deportation;
- the date of death (when known).
Over 70.000 have already been installed in Europe, the first in Cologne, Germany, in 1995; they are the "Stumbling Stones", Stolpersteine, in German, an initiative created by the artist Gunter Demnig as a reaction to every form of denialism and oblivion, in order to remember all the victims of National-Socialism, who for any reason have been persecuted: religion, ethnicity, political ideas, sexual orientation.
To date, Stumbling Stones can be found in over 2.000 cities in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Holland, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland , Ukraine, Hungary as well as in Italy with also the city of Milan.
On 10 August 1944, in Milan, fifteen partisans were taken from the San Vittore prison by order of Gestapo captain Theodor Saevecke and shot at dawn, in Piazzale Loreto, by a firing squad made up of fascist soldiers.
Immediately after the Second World War in Italy, after the liberation of Milan, the square was briefly called 'Piazza dei Fifteen Martyrs' in memory of the killed partisans, and then resumed its previous name. In the same period, a memorial stone was erected on the site of the massacre and in memory of the martyrs who fell there. This memorial stone was replaced by a monument erected in August 1960.
The monument to the martyrs of Piazzale Loreto is a sculpture by Giannino Castiglioni located in Piazzale Loreto, on the corner between the square and Viale Andrea Doria, in memory of the victims of the Nazi-Fascist massacre.
The monument presents on one side the figure of a martyr subjected to execution on the iconography of San Sebastiano; on the opposite side there is the writing "ALTA L'ILLUMINATA FRONTE FELL IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM", below the wording follows the list of the 15 fallen, the date of the massacre, 10 August 1944 and the symbols of the Italian Republic and the Municipality of Milan .
The 15 fallen are: Bravin Gian Antonio, Casiraghi Giulio, Del Riccio Renzo, Esposito Andrea, Fiorani Domenico, Fogagnolo Umberto, Galimberti Tullio, Gasparini Vittorio, Mastrodomenico Emidio, Poletti Angelo, Principato Salvatore, Ragni Andrea, Soncini Eraldo, Temolo Libero and Vertemati Vital.
On 13 September 1943 the Nazis occupied the Hotel Regina and transformed it into the headquarters of the SS. Once the elegant building had been requisitioned, inside its rooms and in Office IV B4 (specifically responsible for anti-Jewish persecution), until April 1945, partisans, political opponents of Nazi-fascism and Jews were tortured and killed.
On the top floor there were the security cells, where the victims were subjected to long interrogations and torture, then sent to the San Vittore prison and from here in many cases to platform 21 of the Central station to be deported.
The command of the Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO-SD, Security Police) was established in the "Regina", which includes the Gestapo (political police), the Kripo (criminal police) and the Sicherheitsdienst (SS information and intelligence service).
Among the many ruthless Nazi hierarchs and officers, the former Hotel Regina hosted Colonel Walter Rauff - the inventor of the Gaswagen, the death trucks that had killed thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe with their exhaust fumes - and Captain Theodor Saevecke , responsible for coordinating anti-partisan repression.
In 2010, the Municipality of Milan, in via Silvio Pellico 7, placed a plaque so as not to forget the atrocities committed at the Albergo Regina, the former Nazi headquarters of the SS. In 2022, after documentary findings in recent years in the State and San Vittore archives made it possible to ascertain that Jewish citizens also passed through those rooms, the plaque was replaced to include all the categories of those persecuted at the inn.
In June 1944, the war criminal Pietro Koch opened a Villa Triste with his gang (Villa Triste is the name of various places of torture used by the Nazi-fascists during the last years of the Second World War when the Republic was established Sociale Italiana) in via Paolo Uccello 17, in what was “Villa Fossati”.
Up to a hundred people were crammed into this place, crowded into underground rooms transformed into cells.
The screams of the tortured could be heard from the street. This place of torture was short-lived: there were protests from the Milanese population which forced the RSI justice minister Piero Pisenti, on 25 September of that same year, to order the closure of "Villa Triste". The Fossati family, owners of the Vila, having learned of the massacre that had occurred, decided not to live there anymore and left it as a legacy to a missionary institute, which in turn donated it to a congregation of nuns.
Main place of detention of political prisoners, partisans, strikers and Jews, later sent to concentration and extermination camps.
Built on the ancient Capuchin convent of San Vittore allo Olmi, in Piazza Filangieri 2, the San Vittore prison, during the fascist regime, became a place of detention for numerous political opponents, victims of the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State. In September 1943, the Germans, having occupied Milan, requisitioned a wing of the prison, which from that moment on was managed directly by the SS based at the Hotel Regina: they assumed control of the fourth and sixth rays intended for political prisoners, and of the fifth ward intended for to the Jews.
For the Jews, San Vittore served as a provincial concentration camp, as well as a collection point for those arrested in the border areas with Switzerland and in the large cities of the North such as Genoa and Turin; furthermore it was also a prison with a regional level collection function for political prisoners.
San Vittore was liberated on 26 April 1945 by the partisans of the Matteotti Brigades.
The monument to the Little Martyrs of Gorla is an ossuary monument by Remo Brioschi Brioschi placed in Piazza Piccoli Martiri in memory of the massacre which occurred on 20 October 1944. The Gorla massacre caused the death of 184 children (the "Little Martyrs of Gorla") , pupils of the "Francesco Crispi" elementary school in Milan, following an Allied air raid.
The monument consists of a bronze sculptural group with a mother holding the body of a child.
At the base there is the inscription: «The people - mourns two hundred children - killed by the war - here in their school - with their teachers - 20 October 1944» and behind the female figure an architectural structure in granite with the inscription " HERE IS THE WAR”, followed by the date "20 - X - 1944" and the depiction of a plane dropping a bomb on a building and the result of the explosion.