Cell no. 2 on the second floor commemorates the partisans shot at Forte Bravetta.
The fort was one of 15 military fortifications built in Rome from 1877 to 1891 for defence purposes. Since 1919 it had been used as an ammunitions depot and shooting range.
In 1926 the Fascist party reintroduced the death penalty, and from 1932 Forte Bravetta became a place of execution. During the months of occupation the task of carrying out the death sentences imposed by the German command, by firing squad, was entrusted to Italian soldiers.
In the cell some exemplary figures of partisans who suffered the death penalty are remembered.
Entering, on the left wall, there is the pencilled signature of Piero Benedetti, an important member of the Communist Party, arrested in his carpentry workshop by the Questura's political team on 31 December 1943 and convicted by the German command for possession of arms. He was shot on 29 April 1944.
On the same wall there are pictures of Gianfranco Mattei e Giorgio Labò *1, members of the GAPs.
On the opposite wall is a portrait of don Giuseppe Morosini , a heroic priest of the resistance,*2 and a tender lullaby, composed by him in music and words for the imminent birth of the son of Epimenio Liberi, his cellmate in Regina Coeli prison, later killed at Fosse Ardeatine.
On the right wall there are some prison data cards from Via Tasso and Regina Coeli. Of particular interest is that of Franco Sardone, on which the note in German appears: “killed by Herbert Kappler" on 31 January 1944.
Sardone, a 50-year-old teacher, belonging to the Action Party, was arrested on 11 January. His name also appears among those shot at Forte Bravetta, which suggests the concealment of a death that occurred in via Tasso, most likely during an interrogation.
