Plans have been published for a Shoah museum to be built in Rome near Villa Torlonia in the Nomentana area of the city close to some Jewish catacombs.

The ground floor of the building will be of glass and there will be a black monolith with the names of the more than 7,000 Italian Jews killed between 19431945.

The museum will house a permanent exhibition about the persecution of the Italian-Jewish population and will have a collection of audio-visual material. Those responsible for the museum hope to have filmed interviews gathered by the American film director Steven Spielberg, of Italian Jews who survived deportation and internment. Work on the museum is expected to take three years and cost 6 million.