Museum of the End of the War, Dongo

About this place

On 27 April 1945 partisans stopped a retreating German column at the Musso roadblock, on the narrow road between Musso and Dongo, and went through the trucks one by one. In one of them sat a man in a German army greatcoat and helmet: Benito Mussolini, in a convoy running north for the frontier. The Museum of the End of the War now occupies the very palazzo where his ministers were held that night, a few metres from the lakefront where fifteen leaders of the Fascist republic were shot late the following afternoon. It is a small, tightly made museum in the ground-floor rooms of Palazzo Manzi, Dongo's town hall since 1937. The telling is multimedia: archive film, documents, recorded testimony and personal effects, with English panels and laminated room cards that make the visit work even if you read no Italian. An hour covers it. What matters is the tone, which neither sensationalises nor glorifies anyone: it lays out the last days of the Italian Social Republic and the Resistance war on the lake as they happened, summary verdicts and killings included, along with the questions still unsettled eighty years on, such as the Dongo gold that travelled in that convoy and vanished. On the floor above is the Sala d'Oro, the gilded hall of honour where the owners of the palazzo once held their parties, where the men arrested at Musso waited to learn their fate, and which in the same weeks, before and after, was laid out as a chapel of rest for dead partisans. The gap between the decoration and the event is the strongest thing you take away; the room is shown by prior arrangement, so ask at the desk. Dongo is not a casual detour, and the journey is half the decision. It sits about fifty kilometres north of Como on the western shore. The simplest way is the C10 bus from Como towards Colico, via Argegno, Menaggio and on to Dongo: close to two hours, running about hourly for most of the day. By car it is an hour to an hour and a quarter on the Regina road, wedged between mountain and water and thoroughly clogged on summer weekends. The boat is the tempting option and the conditional one: the fast Como-Colico service that calls at Dongo runs only on the summer timetable, roughly mid-May to early October, and only a handful of times a day, so check the current timetable before you build a day around it. A comfortable compromise is to reach Menaggio however you like, then continue by bus or on the upper-lake boat. Seasonality is not a footnote here. The season is April to October, Tuesday to Sunday; from November to the end of March the museum opens only by prior booking, and in season Mondays are closed unless they fall on a public holiday. The rooms also shut from one until three every open day, with last admission half an hour before closing, so factor both gaps into which bus you take. Entry is five euros for adults, three for 12-18s and over-65s, free under twelve and for visitors with disabilities, bought at the door. The subject is heavy and not for young children; the exhibition itself is on the ground floor and easy going, while the Sala d'Oro is a floor up, means stairs, and needs arranging. Dongo is a quiet town with limited places to eat and no halal restaurant we could confirm, so carry something or push lunch on to neighbouring Gravedona, whose Romanesque church of Santa Maria del Tiglio is worth adding if you have come this far anyway.