Italy and Italians were in the middle of summer.
Roads filled with vehicles traveling across the peninsula towards holiday destinations.
Airports and ports too. It was teeming with tourists, both Italian and foreign, who strongly needed a break from work, to enjoy a few days away from their daily routine. Similarly, railways were traversed from north to south and vice versa by numerous trains, many extra services as was customary at the time, overflowing with tourists and travelers.
Bologna Centrale Station, a crucial hub of Italian railway transport.
More crowded than at any other time of the year. A hustle and bustle of travelers, each with their own story, their own thoughts, hopes, plans, disappointments, who were about to depart or simply rushing to grab a sandwich or a coffee during their train's stopover.
No one knew that a device hidden inside a suitcase lay in a corner of one of the waiting rooms, ready to explode. A deadly device weighing several kilograms of explosives left by criminal hands, between the legs of unsuspecting travelers, who had entered that room to rest and recover from the Bolognese heat.
A very bright light, a roar, an immense cloud of dust and debris, at 10:25 AM, shook the station and darkened the sky of Bologna.
Debris fell, along with fragments of walls, beams, steel, glass, onto the bodies of hundreds of people.
Not all the dust had settled on the ground when dozens of travelers, railway workers, firefighters, law enforcement, and taxi drivers, bent over the rubble, began to extract the 85 horribly mutilated and desecrated victims and the 200 injured who would remain so for the rest of their lives.
The city did not succumb to the chaos of a terrible event, did not plunge into the deepest fear, and did not yield to the unheard-of stupidity and cruelty of those who had wanted to carry out that infamous act. The city reacted, it rose again, because that's what Bologna is like.
This reconstruction of the tragic event within the museum path was desired to remember and honor the memory of all the victims of the August 2nd massacre.
A fitting tribute to remember the victims, survivors, and rescuers of what would later become the most serious terrorist attack in our country since the post-war period.