Salò, one of the places in Italy most associated with fascism, revokes Mussolini's honorary citizenship on the third attempt in 20 years.

The northern Italian town of Salò has revoked the honorary citizenship of Italy's wartime fascist dictator Benito Mussolini following a vote by the local council on Wednesday evening.

The first centre-left administration in the last 20 years succeeded in stripping Mussolini of his honorary citizenship of the town on the banks of Lake Garda, with 12 votes in favour, three against and one abstention.

The motion to revoke Mussolini's honorary title, conferred on him in 1924 in the early years of the ventennio fascist regime, was put forward by centre-left councillor Tiberio Evoli.

This was the third attempt to strip Il Duce of the honour in the last 20 years.

Up until last year Salò had been governed for two decades by the centre-right, which had rejected the motion when it was proposed by the minority.

There is nothing new about Italian towns revoking Mussolini's honorary citizenship however this is different: Salò was the heart of the Italian Social Republic, the puppet fascist regime controlled by Nazi Germany that governed northern Italy after the armistice of 8 September 1943, during the second world war.

Citizenship was granted to Benito Mussolini long before the birth of the Italian Social Republic. It was 23 May 1924, less than a month before a fascist squad murdered Italian socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti, in a killing that shook Mussolini's regime.

Every year on 28 October, a group of fascist sympathisers make the pilgrimage to Salò to mark the anniversary of the March on Rome.

The revocation of Mussolini's title "had to be done", the town's centre-left mayor Francesco Cagnini said on Wednesday night, describing the move as "not ideological" but rather a "unifying moment of sharing, union and pacification, reaffirming the values of love for freedom and democracy".

"We absolutely do not intend to erase history, nor exempt ourselves from dealing with it" - Cagnini stressed - "We do not erase anything: that page of our history, however dramatic, remains."

Photo credit: Davide Zanin Photography / Shutterstock.com.