On the shores of Lake Como, where legends ebb, fables flow.
In the eventide of World War II, Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian resistance fighters in the lakeside village of Dongo as he fled to Switzerland. The next day they shot him and his mistress against the wall of a villa in Mezzegra overlooking the lake. From there, the fable takes over: Why did they shoot him instead of putting him on trial to atone for the millions of casualties? Some accounts say he was carrying confidential missives from Winston Churchill that could’ve compromised Britain; others say the anti-fascist partisans who made up the Italian resistance wanted to make it a point that it was them, and not the Americans or Soviets or British, that dealt with Il Duce on their own terms.
