Italian council buys Mussolini’s villa to keep it away from ‘fascist nostalgics’ | Benito Mussolini

An Italian council has bought a villa where Benito Mussolini spent his summer holidays, partly to prevent the property from falling into the hands of “fascist nostalgics”.

Daniela Angelini, the left-wing mayor of Riccione, a town close to Rimini on Italy’s Adriatic coast, said the purchase of Villa Mussolini at auction was “an act of love and vision” and that putting it back into the hands of the public was a victory for the entire town.

Riccione’s council had fended off competition from a private buyer, a former member of the Italian Social Movement, the neo-fascist party founded in 1946 by persistent supporters of Mussolini.

The villa has a long and, unsurprisingly, controversial history. Built a few steps from the sea in 1893, the villa was purchased by Mussolini’s second wife, Rachele, in 1934. Born in Predappio, another town in the Emilia-Romagna region, the fascist dictator arrived by seaplane and often used the villa for government business during his stay. The Mussolini family expanded the property to include a third floor, 20 rooms and a tennis court.

After World War II and the fall of the fascist regime in Italy, the property came into public ownership. During Riccione’s economic boom in the 1950s and 60s, it was used for various commercial purposes, including a veterinary clinic for dogs and a restaurant. A communist mayor of Riccione tried to have it bulldozed in the late 1970s.

The villa was abandoned for years before it was purchased by the Cassa di Risparmio savings bank in Rimini in the late 1990s. The bank restored it and opened it in 2005 as a venue for art exhibitions and other public events, including state weddings.

The existence of the villa and Mussolini associations had long divided Riccione; The controversy resurfaced last year when the Cassa di Risparmio foundation decided to put the villa up for auction. Councilors from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right party, the Brothers Italy, argued that the person who bought the property should not change its name from Villa Mussolini.

Angelini said the name would be retained despite pressure from some of his allies to change it.

He said history should be cultivated, not “cancelled”, and that changing the name might have had the “dangerous effect” of turning the villa into “a place for fascist nostalgias. This is something the administration will never accept”.

Angelini said the plan is to continue using Villa Mussolini as a community space, including exhibits and other social and cultural events depicting the “good, bad and ugly” of 20th-century history. “Yes, the name evokes an ugly story and we will tell it. You cannot erase it, you must tell it correctly, you must ensure that our democratic values ​​​​are revealed.”

Since the Second World War, Riccione, like the wider Emilia Romagna region, has been predominantly left-wing. However, it was only in 2025 that the city council officially revoked Mussolini’s honorary citizenship, which almost all Italian towns and cities had to grant during the fascist regime. “This is a man who is tainted by crimes, who does not deserve this honor,” Angelini said. “But the villa is another story; it will be used as an expression of the values ​​of our community and our democracy.”