73rd anniversary of atrocity at Rome’s Fosse Ardeatine.

Italian president Sergio Mattarella will attend a wreath-laying ceremony at Rome’s Fosse Ardeatine mausoleum at 11.00 on Thursday 23 March, in memory of the 335 people killed by the then occupying Nazi forces 73 years ago, on 24 March 1944.

The mass killing in 1944 was in retaliation to a partisan attack on a column of marching German policemen the day before on Via Rasella, near Piazza Barberini in central Rome.

The Nazis decided that ten Italians should be executed for each German, an order soon authorised by Hitler who stipulated that it be carried out within 24 hours.