Verbania, June 20th, 1944. They forced 43 partisans to walk almost ten kilometres from Intra to Fondotoce with a placard bearing the words: “Sono questi i liberatori d’Italia oppure sono i banditi?” (Are these the liberators of Italy or are they the criminals?). Then the SS-Polizei who had rounded them up in Val Grande raised their machine guns towards them and fired. There was only one survivor. What was their crime? They did not want to live under oppression, they dreamt of freedom and democracy. At the end of the war those who shared their ideals triumphed, and they created the Parco della Memoria e della Pace (Park of Remembrance and Peace) on the site of the massacre to keep their memory and their message alive. The memorial of the dead for freedom and democracy stands on an area of ​​approx. 16,000 sq. mts: a long wall bears the names of over 1,200 people who fell during the struggle for liberation in Verbano Cusio Ossola and in the neighbouring territories. 

One side of the wall bears a plaque in remembrance of the assassination of a group of Jews carried out by German soldiers on the shores of Lake Maggiore in September-October 1943: it was the first Nazi massacre of Jews perpetrated in Italy.

The monumental complex also displays an urn with the ashes of an unknown deportee from Mauthausen, a bronze sculpture dedicated to the Georgians fighting in the ranks of the Italian Resistance and, lastly, a homage to the military inmates in the Nazi concentration camps who never returned. 

The spacious Casa della Resistenza is home to the eponymous Association which researches the memory and values ​​of the National Liberation Struggle and educates citizens, particularly the younger generations. Numerous initiatives for visitors comprise didactic activities, lectures, workshops and study sessions for schoolchildren and groups, plus documentary research in the Aldo Aniasi Library.

The Association also promotes historical and cultural tourism in the Verbano Cusio Ossola province with excursions along partisan trails, and it establishes twinning initiatives with both Italian and foreign institutions and places of remembrance.

Furthermore, the Casa della Resistenza collaborates with the ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans) which has two sections in Verbania, the “42 Martiri” section in Fondotoce and the “Augusta Pavesi” section in Intra. The Tour della Memoria (Tour of Remembrance), periodically organized for citizens and schools, visits the municipalities most affected by the events of the Second World War