Italy marks Liberation Day with holiday

Rome: On 25 April Italy celebrated the 77th Festa della Liberazione which marks the country’s liberation from German occupation and fascist rule at the end of world war two.

A public holiday across Italy, all state schools and offices were closed on Monday 25 April, as well as many shops.

The day is marked in Rome with a ceremony at 09.00 at the Altare della Patria, attended by Italian president Sergio Mattarella.

This will result in traffic diversions and bus detours in the Piazza Venezia area.

Also in Rome, at 09.30 supporters of ANPI, the National Partisan Association of Italy, will walk from Largo Benedetto Bompiani in the Ardeatino / Tor Marancia district to Piazza di Porta S. Paolo, by the Piramide Cestia monument, leading to numerous road closures and parking bans along the route.

Italy’s state-run museums and archaeological sites was open to the public for free on Monday.

The capital’s mayor Roberto Gualtieri marked the occasion by visiting the Historic Museum of the Liberation of Rome, a former SS prison which documents the persecution of Jews and resistance figures tortured here during the Nazi occupation of Rome from 1943-1944.