Italy marks Festa della Liberazione with holiday on 25 April

The event will result in street closures and bus detours in the area around Piazza Venezia (for updates check the city's mobility website nearer the time). Mattarella will also mark the occasion with a ceremony in San Severino Marche, in the province of Macerata, at 11.00. Why does Italy celebrate Liberation Day on 25 April? On the morning of 25 April, the National Partisan Association of Italy (ANPI) will pay homage to the victims of the massacre at the Fosse Ardeatine where the Nazis murdered 335 anti-fascist prisoners, Jews and civilians on 23 March 1944. This solemn event is followed by a public gathering at Parco Schuster, from 09.30, for live music, readings and a rally (see ANPI website for details). Italy's state-run museums and archaeological sites will be open to the public for free on 25 April, for the fourth year in a row, the culture ministry has confirmed. This year Rome will celebrate the Italian Resistance with the Festa della Resistenza, a four-day festival based mainly at the Mattatoio in Testaccio from 23-26 April. The 2026 programme, available on the city website, includes more than 100 free events to remember the founding values ​​of the Italian Resistance. To mark the event, the city has launched a campaign to highlight the faces of five protagonists of the Resistance and the birth of the Republic: Lina Merlin, Maria Agamben, Nilde Iotti, Teresa Noce and Angela M. Guidi. Rome also hosts the 79th edition of the Gran Premio della Liberazione, involving cyclists of all ages taking part in a route that begins and ends near the Baths of Caracalla. Since becoming mayor in 2022, Gualtieri has marked the Festa della Liberazione by visiting the Historic Museum of the Liberation of Rome, a former SS prison which documents the persecution of Jews and Resistance figures tortured there during the Nazi occupation of Rome from 1943-1944.