Tavolicci is a village in the municipality of Verghereto (FC) and a mountain hamlet of Alto Savio, located between Romagna, Marche and Tuscany; today it is almost completely uninhabited. This small village on a large landscape was the protagonist and is the custodian of a terrible tragedy caused by the madness of the Second World War and for these facts the Municipality obtained the Gold Medal of civil merit, delivered to the Mayor of Verghereto on April 25, 2003 directly by the President of the Republic.
Tavolicci is a place of remembrance since on 22 July 1944 the "most gruesome and numerically largest massacre in Romagna" took place in this small and isolated village: 64 people, including 19 under 10 years old, were killed by the 4th Battalion of Italian-German police volunteers. In spite of the particularly brutal violence and the tragic consequences, the massacre remains not only unpunished but also difficult to analyze: it concerns an isolated and not easily accessible place, the official documentation available is immediately scarce or even contradictory and the memory of the events, passed down with difficulty within the close community concerned. It remains, for fear and reticence, extraneous to the courtrooms and institutions in charge. Therefore, the trial celebrated at the Extraordinary Court of Forlì in 1946 and that of Viterbo in 1949 ended with nothing done, leaving many questions open; in the same way, historical research takes decades to be able to reconstruct events and restore their complexity.
Subsequent and various studies, carried out since the 70s, deserve credit for having reconstructed the dynamics of the massacre, having put it in relation to a wider context, of having attributed the responsibilities to the aforementioned IV Italian-German Police Battalion and to have hypothesized the causes, bearing in mind the proven extraneousness of the local community to the active resistance movement. The massacre of Tavolicci, however long silenced, removed and forgotten, proves particularly important in trying to understand both the last phase of the Second World War and the evolution of historical narratives.
Visit the museum "House of the massacre of Tavolicci" now restored and furnished as at the time of the war. Inside there are works concerning World War II and some works by the sculptor Cangini. For guided visits to the House of the Massacre it is necessary to contact the Historical Institute of the Resistance of Forlì by phone.
Every year, on the day of April 25, the Historical Institute of the Resistance of Forlì proposes "The walk of Peace and Memory", Tavolicci-Fragheto or Fragheto-Tavolicci, to remember the tragic events of 1944 and renew the commitment to affirm the principles established in art. 11 of the Italian Constitution.
