On April 29, 1945, partisans and citizens of Milan gathered in Piazzale Loreto to celebrate the death of the Duce. Mussolini’s body, which was hanging by its feet, became a symbol of the victorious Resistance. But that mangled body, a true icon of the entire regime, also embodies the horror of civil war and is a story that is hard to hold up as a cornerstone of the foundation of the new Italy. The body was stolen by the neo-fascists in 1946 and was hidden by the Christian Democrats for eleven years, until – only in 1957 – it was buried at Predappio.