Villa Triglia

Villa Triglia was the home of Italian politician Bartolomeo “Meuccio” Ruini who had been a Radical member of parliament since 1913. Forced to interrupt his political activity as an anti-fascist, he took part in the underground struggle from 1942 with the Democrazia del Lavoro (Labour Democratic Party), fighting in their ranks during the Resistance.

While Ruini was in Rome, which had already been liberated by the Allies, the Villa was requisitioned in the summer of 1944 by the occupying Germans who established an Abwehr (Wehrmacht counterespionage) post in the building. This group of Germans included Eberhard Bethge, a pupil and close friend of theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was imprisoned at the time before being hanged in April 1945. The secret correspondence with Bonhoeffer was saved by Bethge during his stay at Villa Triglia and was later included in Bonhoeffer’s posthumously published work, Resistance and Surrender: Letters and Writings from Prison. Eberhard Bethge was also arrested and sentenced to death by the German authorities, but the arrival of the Allies and the end of the war saved him.

The building was returned to Meuccio Ruini in 1945 and is now owned by the Albarelli family. In 2015, a commemorative plaque was placed at the piazza which leads to the villa. It evokes the history and events that occurred in the Villa, marking it as a remembrance site of the German occupation.