Dongo Treasure
   HOME





Dongo Treasure
The Dongo Treasure was the valuables in Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's possession at the time of his capture and execution. Treasure During the dissolution of the Mussolini administration, valuables disappeared or were distributed. The finance minister distributed 200 million lire of state funds among government ministers who fled Italy along with their belongings. At the time of Benito Mussolini's capture, on April 27, 1945, the Italian resistance fighter Urbano Lazzaro seized two cases of valuables and documents. Mussolini's case included 1,150,000 lire and 160 British sovereigns. Lazzaro brought the two cases to a bank in the village of Domaso, north of Dongo. Additionally, Mussolini's German escorts had discarded three bags of valuables in a river. These contained gold jewelry that Italian citizens had donated to the Fascists during the 1935 ''Oro alla Patria'' fundraising campaign for Mussolini's Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Two fishermen recovered the sacks. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who, upon assuming office as Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister, became the dictator of Fascist Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, his overthrow in 1943. He was also of Italian fascism from the establishment of the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919, until Death of Benito Mussolini, his summary execution in 1945. He founded and led the National Fascist Party (PNF). As a dictator and founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired the List of fascist movements, international spread of fascism during the interwar period. Mussolini was originally a socialist politician and journalist at the Avanti! (newspaper), ''Avanti!'' newspaper. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but was expelled for advocating military intervention in World War I. In 1914, Mussolini founded a newspaper, ''Il P ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Death Of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, was summary execution, summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. However, since the end of the war, the circumstances of Mussolini's death, and the identity of his executioner, have been subjects of continuing dispute and controversy in Italy. In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany, but was soon met with military failure. By the autumn of 1943, he was reduced to being the leader of a Italian Social Republic, German puppet state in northern Italy, and was faced with the Allies of World War II, Allied advance from the south, and an increasingly violent internal conflict with the partisans. In April 1945, with the Allies breaking through the last German defe ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Urbano Lazzaro
Urbano Lazzaro (November 4, 1924 – January 3, 2006) was an Italian resistance fighter who played an important role in capturing Benito Mussolini near the end of World War II. Lazzaro was born in Quinto Vicentino in the Veneto region. As a young man, he joined the Italian Guardia di Finanza before the war. When Italy's alliance with Germany collapsed in 1943, Lazzaro was among many Italian officials arrested by the Germans. Lazzaro escaped from German detention and joined the communist partisans in northern Italy. By April 27, 1945, he was serving as the political commissar of the 52nd ''Garibaldi'' Partisan Brigade. At Dongo, troops of the brigade had halted a convoy of German trucks trying to escape into Switzerland. A partisan became suspicious of an older "German" in a greatcoat, wearing glasses, and with his helmet pulled down over his head. Upon having the man brought to his attention, Lazzaro immediately recognized him as the former ''Duce''. Lazzaro was not ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lire (Italy)
The lira ( , ; : lire, , ) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was introduced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different states that would eventually form the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. It was subdivided into 100 ''centesimi'' (: ''centesimo''), which means "hundredths" or "cents". The lira was also the currency of the Albanian Kingdom from 1941 to 1943. The term originates from ''libra'', the largest unit of the Carolingian monetary system used in Western Europe and elsewhere from the 8th to the 20th century. The Carolingian system is the origin of the French ''livre tournois'' (predecessor of the franc), the Italian lira, and the pound unit of sterling and related currencies. In 1999, the euro became Italy's unit of account and the lira became a national subunit of the euro at a rate of €1 = Lit 1,936.27, before being replaced as cash in 2002. History Etymology The Caroli ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sovereign (British Coin)
The sovereign is a British gold coin with a face value, nominal value of one pound sterling (£1) and contains of pure gold. Struck since 1817, it was originally a Currency in circulation, circulating coin that was accepted in Britain and elsewhere in the world; it is now a bullion coin and is sometimes mounted in jewellery. In addition, circulation strikes and proof coin, proof examples are often collected for their numismatic value. In most recent years, it has borne the design of Saint George and the Dragon on the obverse and reverse, reverse; the initials () of the designer, Benedetto Pistrucci, are visible to the right of the date. The coin was named after the English gold sovereign, which was last minted about 1603, and originated as part of the Great Recoinage of 1816. Many in Parliament believed a one-pound coin should be issued rather than the 21-shilling guinea (British coin), guinea that was struck until that time. The Master of the Mint, William Wellesley-Pole, 3 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Domaso
Domaso (Comasco: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy, located about north of Milan and about northeast of Como. As of 9 October 2011, it had a population of 1,455 and an area of 6.1 km².All demographics and other statistics: Italian statistical institute Istat. Domaso borders the following municipalities: Colico, Gravedona, Livo, Peglio, Vercana. History Between 1634 and 1640 the governor and philanthropist Louis Paniza, maternal ancestor of the collaborator of the Founding Fathers of the United States Luis de Unzaga Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga (1717–1793), also known as Louis Unzaga y Amezéga le Conciliateur, Luigi de Unzaga Panizza and Lewis de Onzaga, was governor of Spanish Louisiana from late 1769 to mid-1777, as well as a Captain General of Venezuela ..., rebuilt the Church of Saint Bartholomew, the convent and in that church he built a chapel where he had two schools also founded, with the salaries of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Dongo, Lombardy
Dongo (Comasco: ) is a ''comune'' in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy. It lies on the northwestern shore of Lake Como between Gravedona and Musso at the mouth of the Albano. It is north of Milan and about northeast of Como. It was in Dongo, on 27 April 1945, that Benito Mussolini and other fascists, fleeing from Milan towards Valtellina, were captured by Urbano Lazzaro and other partisans. Dongo borders the following municipalities: Colico, Consiglio di Rumo, Garzeno, Germasino, Musso, Pianello del Lario, Stazzona. Main sights Palazzo del Vescovo The Palazzo del Vescovo (Palace of the Bishop) was erected in the 17th century by the family of the Marquis Cossoni. In 1854, Carlo Romanò, the Bishop of Como, acquired the building from the Cossoni family. In 1983, the Town of Dongo purchased the building. The citizens of Dongo, assisted financially by the Comunità Montana Alto Lario Occidentale, initiated the complete restoration of the Palazzo sh ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Oro Alla Patria
''Oro alla Patria'' ("Gold for the Fatherland") was a 1935 Italian fascist campaign that asked Italians to donate their gold assets to fundraise for their fatherland. Faced with League of Nations sanctions for its Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Fascist government collected 250,000 wedding rings from Rome and 180,000 from Milan, amid other personal gold jewelry and objects totaling 33,600 kilograms of gold and 93,400 of silver. In acts of sacrifice for the state, prominent figures donated items of great symbolic value: Elena of Montenegro, the Queen's wedding ring, Umberto II of Italy, the Prince's collar of the Annunciation, the dramatist Luigi Pirandello's Nobel Prize, Guglielmo Marconi's senator medal, and Mussolini's Rocca delle Caminate castle statue busts. See also * Dongo Treasure References Further reading * * Quirico, Domenico (2002). ''Squadrone bianco: storia delle truppe coloniali italiane''. Le scie. Milano: Mondadori. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Second Italo-Ethiopian War
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression waged by Fascist Italy, Italy against Ethiopian Empire, Ethiopia, which lasted from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Italian Invasion (; Oromo language, Oromo: Weerara Xaaliyaanii), and in Italy as the Ethiopian War (). It is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations before the outbreak of World War II. On 3 October 1935, two hundred thousand soldiers of the Italian Army commanded by Marshal Emilio De Bono attacked from Italian Eritrea, Eritrea (then an Italian colonial possession) without prior declaration of war. At the same time a minor force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Italian Somalia. On 6 October, Adwa was conquered, a symbolic place for the Italian army because of the defeat at the Battle of Adwa by the Ethiopian ar ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Life (magazine)
''Life'' (stylized as ''LIFE'') is an American magazine launched in 1883 as a weekly publication. In 1972, it transitioned to publishing "special" issues before running as a monthly from 1978 to 2000. Since then, ''Life'' has irregularly published "special" issues. Originally published from 1883 to 1936 as a general-interest and humor publication, it featured contributions from many important writers, illustrators and cartoonists of its time, such as Charles Dana Gibson and Norman Rockwell. In 1936, Henry Luce purchased the magazine, and relaunched it as the first all-photographic American news magazine. Its place in the history of photojournalism is considered one of its most important contributions to the world of publishing. From 1936 to the 1960s, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging general-interest magazine known for its photojournalism. During this period, it was one of the most popular magazines in the United States, with its circulation regularly reaching a quarter of the U.S. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Italian Fascism
Italian fascism (), also called classical fascism and Fascism, is the original fascist ideology, which Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini developed in Italy. The ideology of Italian fascism is associated with a series of political parties led by Mussolini: the National Fascist Party (PNF), which governed the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, and the Republican Fascist Party (PFR), which governed the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Italian fascism also is associated with the post–war Italian Social Movement (MSI) and later Italian Neo-fascism, neo-fascist political organisations. Italian fascism originated from ideological combinations of ultranationalism and Italian nationalism, national syndicalism and revolutionary nationalism, and from the militarism of Italian irredentism to regain "lost overseas territories of Italy" deemed necessary to restore Italian nationalist pride.Aristotle A. Kallis. ''Fascist ideology: territory and expansionism in Italy and Ger ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

April 1945 In Europe
April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Its length is 30 days. April is commonly associated with the season of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is the seasonal equivalent to October in the Northern Hemisphere and vice versa. History The Romans gave this month the Latin name ''Aprilis''"April" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 497. but the derivation of this name is uncertain. The traditional etymology is from the verb ''aperire'', "to open", in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to "open", which is supported by comparison with the modern Greek use of άνοιξη (''ánixi'') (opening) for spring. Since some of the Roman months were named in honor of divinities, and as April was sacred to the goddess Venus, her Veneralia being held on the first day, it has been suggested that Aprilis was originally her month ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]