The memory

Bologna, 45th anniversary of the massacre. Mattarella: "The country responded with firmness".

Bologna and Italy remember the 85 victims and over 200 injured in the bomb that devastated the waiting room at Bologna station on 2 August 1980. From the Head of State 'responsibility ascertained thanks to the tenacious work of the magistrates'.

2 August 2025

Quarantacinque anni fa la strage di Bologna

4' min read

Forty-five years have passed since the morning of 2 August 1980. It was a Saturday of holiday departures, the light summer weather was broken forever by the brutality of terrorism. That date 45 years later still represents one of the darkest pages of post-World War II Italian history. At 10.25 a.m., a violent explosion ripped through the waiting room of Bologna's central station, killing 85 people and injuring over 200. A high explosive device, placed in an abandoned suitcase in the second class waiting room, devastated part of the building and caused the roof to collapse, involving travellers, operators and employees. The power of the bomb was such that it spread death and panic far beyond the lounge, hurling debris even onto the tracks and parked trains.

On the 45th anniversary of the tragedy that shook the whole of Italy, Bologna and the whole country remember the victims with demonstrations, public ceremonies and the long sound of the station siren at 10.25 am. The commemoration kicked off at Palazzo d'Accursio with a meeting between the institutions and the victims' families' association, then the procession from Via Ugo Bassi to Piazza delle Medaglie d'Oro, and the official speeches, interrupted by the triple locomotive whistle introducing the minute's silence at 10.25, the time of the massacre.

A message from the Head of State also arrived in the morning. "The Bologna Station massacre left an indelible mark of inhumanity on Italy's identity by a ruthless neo-fascist subversive strategy that aimed to strike at constitutional values, social achievements and, with them, our very civil coexistence". He went on to add: 'Forty-five years ago, 2 August, with the mangled bodies, the many innocent dead, the immense suffering of the relatives, the upheaval of a city and, with it, of the entire national community, is in the memory of the country'.

The Head of State then recalled the response of Bologna of Emilia-Romagna and of Italy that 'with readiness and firmness, expressing all the solidarity they are capable of', rejected 'the destabilising design, the complicity also present in State apparatuses, the plots of those who led the killing hands'.

Then the closeness to the families of the victims 'the expression of a cohesive community that adheres to those democratic principles, which the perpetrators of the massacre wanted to erase, generating fear in order to undermine the institutions, trying to push the country towards authoritarian drifts, with responsibilities ascertained thanks to the tenacious work of Magistrates and servants of the State. The Republic deserves the gratitude of the Association of the families of the victims, which has always kept the light on the path that led to unveiling the perpetrators and instigators, a precious example of loyalty to constitutional values, especially for young people".

Speaking on behalf of the government was the Minister for Universities, Anna Maria Bernini: 'We must not be afraid of the truth. And I say on behalf of this government that we will not be afraid of the truth, so I have made a commitment and I will do so: we have made a commitment to ensure that the judgments of the state archives, the circulars that are interpreted in a restrictive manner, are no more'. Although challenged by a citizen addressing the president of the Association of the families of the victims, Paolo Bolognesi, the minister stressed that the goal is to make them accessible to 'researchers and anyone who wants to know in order to tell a story and prevent others so atrocious, terrible, obscene that have forever marked the history of the Republic, because that is a wound that is your wound, but it is also my wound, but it is also the wound of all Italy'.

'Minister Bernini gave some guarantees regarding the process: it does not mean that she said it would be approved or anything like that' but that at least, this process aims to solve some problems that would have 'wasted a lot of time'. This is when the president of the Association, Paolo Bolognesi, said, adding that 'after 45 years, the law that exists for the families of victims is not working completely. At the time, we had made a law to solve the problem,' Bolognesi recalls. 'Piantedosi, who came two years in a row, told me that by the end of last year the law would surely be fixed, but the law is still stuck in the Senate'.

Bolognesi's thanks then go to the General Prosecutor's Office. "I wanted to thank the judges of the General Prosecutor's Office: they have not only carried out investigations that for the 'normal' Prosecutor's Office should not have done", but "from these investigations the trial of the instigators has emerged, which can make us say that even the latest sentence of the Supreme Court of Cassation shows that everything is known, as far as the backstage of the Bologna massacre is concerned. But this also opens up new scenarios and new possibilities for other investigations and probably other trials, which may even rewrite part of the history of our country'.