Italy and Italians were in the midst of summer.
Roads full of vehicles moving across the peninsula towards holiday resorts.
Airports and ports too. It was a swarm of tourists, Italians and also foreigners, who had a strong need to escape from work, to enjoy a few days away from everyday life. No less the railways were traveled from north to south and vice versa, by numerous convoys, many extraordinary as was the custom at the time, overflowing with tourists and travellers.
Bologna Central Station, the nerve center of Italian rail transport.
More crowded than any other time of the year. A confusion of travelers, each with their own story, with their own thoughts, hopes, projects, disappointments, who were preparing to leave or simply running to grab a sandwich or a coffee on the fly during their train stop.
No one knew that a device hidden inside a suitcase was lying in a corner of one of the waiting rooms ready to explode. A deadly device of several kilos of explosives left by criminal hands, between the legs of unaware travelers, who 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 shakes the station and darkens the sky of Bologna.
Debris falling, along with shreds of walls, beams, steel, glass, on the bodies of hundreds of people.
Not all the dust had settled on the ground when dozens of travellers, railway workers, firefighters, police forces, taxi drivers, bent over the rubble, began to extract the 85 horribly mangled and desecrated victims and the 200 wounded who would remain so for life.
The city does not give in to the chaos of a terrible event, does not sink into the darkest fear and does not bow to the unheard-of stupidity and cruelty of those who wanted to commit that infamous act. The city reacts, gets up again, because Bologna is like that.
This reconstruction of the tragic event within the museum itinerary was intended to remember and honor the memory of all the victims of the massacre of August 2nd.
A dutiful contribution to remember the victims, survivors and rescuers of what would later be the most serious terrorist attack in our country since the post-war period.
