Dressed in a black sweater, with “Propaganda” written in bold white letters across the back, Marco, 32, and his two friends had travelled to Predappio from their home in the Marche region to pay their respects at the grave of Benito Mussolini before the impending 100th anniversary of the fascist dictator’s march on Rome.
The ornate Mussolini family crypt, located in the tiny San Cassiano cemetery of the Emilia Romagna town, has attracted thousands of admirers since it reopened on an all-year-round basis in March, with the daily flow increasingly more consistent since the late September general election victory for a coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, which was sworn into government on Saturday.