Monument to the Fallen of 28 July 1943

When the news of the fall of the Fascist regime reached Bari on 28^th July 1943, around two hundred people gathered to celebrate their new-found freedom and went to meet the many political prisoners by marching towards the prison. When they reached the Federazione del Partito Nazionale Fascista (Federation of the National Fascist Party), an army unit and some individuals hidden in position at the windows opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators, causing twenty deaths and at least fifty injuries.

For a year, the massacre was covered up through censorship and unprecedented repression. Many participants in the demonstration were arrested, the corpses buried at night in an atmosphere of intimidation of family members of the dead. Two judicial proceedings were initiated but no one was held accountable for the affair.

The first public denunciation of the massacre was made in November 1944 by Radio Bari, one of the first radio stations in liberated Italy. However, it was only in the 1970s, although the custom of an official remembrance anniversary always took place, that the first journalistic investigations were launched, and the public started to become aware of the event.

In the same years, the monument commemorating the victims of the violent authoritarian restoration of Badoglio and the Monarchy, the last gasp of a dying Fascist regime, was inaugurated. In 2013, brass commemorative panels were added with the names and ages of the fallen.

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