I know this is a famous old photo but can you tell me any info about it? Thanks!
Mussolini’s corpse
On 29 April 1945, the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci, and the other executed Fascists were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3:00 a.m., they were dumped on the ground in the old Piazzale Loreto. The piazza had been renamed “Piazza Quindici Martiri” in honor of 15 anti-Fascists recently executed there.[160]
After being shot, kicked, and spat upon, the bodies were hung upside down on meat hooks from the roof of an Esso gas station.[161] The bodies were then stoned by civilians from below. This was done both to discourage any Fascists from continuing the fight and as an act of revenge for the hanging of many partisans in the same place by Axis authorities. The corpse of the deposed leader became subject to ridicule and abuse. Fascist loyalist Achille Starace was captured and sentenced to death and then taken to the Piazzale Loreto and shown the body of Mussolini. Starace, who once said of Mussolini “He is a god,”[162] saluted what was left of his leader just before he was shot. The body of Starace was subsequently hung up next to the body of Mussolini.
After his death and the display of his corpse in Milan, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave in the Musocco cemetery, to the north of the city. On Easter Sunday 1946 his body was located and dug up by Domenico Leccisi and two other neo-Fascists.
On the loose for months—and a cause of great anxiety to the new Italian democracy—Il Duce’s body was finally “recaptured” in August, hidden in a small trunk at the Certosa di Pavia, just outside Milan. Two Fransciscan brothers were subsequently charged with concealing the corpse, though it was discovered on further investigation that it had been constantly on the move. Unsure what to do, the authorities held the remains in a kind of political limbo for 10 years, before agreeing to allow them to be re-interred at Predappio in Romagna, his birthplace. Adone Zoli, the prime minister of the day, contacted Donna Rachele, the dictator’s widow, to tell her he was returning the remains, as he needed the support of the far-right in parliament, including Leccisi himself. In Predappio the dictator was buried in a crypt (the only posthumous honor granted to Mussolini). His tomb is flanked by marble fasces, and a large idealized marble bust of him is above the tomb.[163]