San Vittore is a prison in the city center of

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

, Italy. Its construction started in 1872 and opened on 7 July 1879. The prison has place for 600 inmates, but it had 1036 prisoners in 2017.

History

The construction of the new prison was decided after the

Italian unification The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

, together with other infrastructure improvement works in Milan in the period between the unification and the city's first town plan of 1889. Until then, prisoners were detained in several other structures not designed as prisons, among them the former Sant'Antonio Abate convent, in the Courthouse and in the former San Vittore convent. For the construction of the new structure the government acquired terrains in the outskirts of the city, in a sparsely developed area at that time. The building, designed by the engineer Francesco Lucca, takes inspiration from the 18th century ''

Panopticon The panopticon is a type of institutional building and a system of control designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept of the design is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be o ...

'', with 6 wings with three floors each. The perimeter walls were originally built in medieval style, but they have almost all been rebuilt with modern standards for security reasons.

Fascist occupation

During

Fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

occupation the San Vittore Prison was used as a house for every enemy (political or war enemy). Since Germans took over the power in Italy, in 1943, a lot of changes happened in the prison, until the big riots happened in April 1946.

German occupation

During the German occupation in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

(1943 – 1945) the prison was partly subject to German jurisdiction, with the SS in control of one of the wings. The prison gained notoriety during the war through the inhumane treatment of inmates by the SS guards and the torture carried out there. On 10 August 1944 15 captured partisans held at the prison, hand picked by

Theo Saevecke Theodor Emil Saevecke (–) was an SS officer and perpetrator of the Holocaust in Poland and the Holocaust in Italy. Biography In 1926, he was a member of the ''Freikorps'', fighting against both the Weimar Republic and communists. On 1 Februar ...

, head of the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

, were publicly executed at

Piazzale Loreto is a major city square in Milan, Italy. Origin The name ''Loreto'' is also used in a wider sense to refer to the district surrounding the square, which is part of the Zone 2 administrative division, in the northeastern part of the city. The ...

and left on display, as a reprisal for a partisan attack on a German military convoy. The prisons served as a way station for Jews arrested in northern Italy, which would be brought to San Vittore Prison and, from there, to

Milano Centrale railway station Milano Centrale ( it, Stazione Milano Centrale) is the main railway station of the city of Milan, Italy, and is the largest railway station in Europe by volume. The station is a terminus and located at the northern end of central Milan. It was o ...

, from where they would be loaded into freight cars on a secret track underneath the station. On March 9 2020 inmates climbed onto the roofs and set fire to cells amid chaos in prisons sparked by the government new restrictions due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

Notable inmates

Mike Bongiorno Michael Nicholas Salvatore Bongiorno (; May 26, 1924 – September 8, 2009) was an Italian-American television host. After a few experiences in the US, he started working on RAI in the 1950s and was considered to be the most popular host in Italy ...

, television host. Detained for 7 months in 1943 before being transferred to

Mauthausen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...

. *

Indro Montanelli Indro Alessandro Raffaello Schizogene Montanelli (; 22 April 1909 – 22 July 2001) was an Italian journalist, historian and writer. He was one of the fifty World Press Freedom Heroes according to the International Press Institute. A voluntee ...

, journalist and historian, shared prison cell with Bongiorno. *

Gaetano Bresci Gaetano Bresci (; November 10, 1869May 22, 1901) was an Italian-American anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy on July 29, 1900. Bresci was the first European regicide not to be executed, as capital punishment in Italy had been a ...

, anarchist, detained from 29 July to 5 November 1900. *

Renato Vallanzasca Renato Vallanzasca Costantini (; born 4 May 1950) is a notorious Italian mobster from Milan who was a powerful figure in the Milanese underworld during the 1970s. Following numerous robberies, kidnappings, murders, and many years as a fugitive, ...

, Italian criminal. *

Salvatore Riina Salvatore Riina (; 16 November 1930 – 17 November 2017), called (, Totò being the diminutive of Salvatore), was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s ...

, Italian criminal, former chief of the

Sicilian Mafia The Sicilian Mafia, also simply known as the Mafia and frequently referred to as Cosa nostra (, ; "our thing") by its members, is an Italian Mafia-terrorist-type organized crime syndicate and criminal society originating in the region of Sicily a ...

. *

Fabrizio Corona Fabrizio Maria Corona (born 29 March 1974) is an Italian entrepreneur, television and media personality and former paparazzo. He is a former partner and director of ''Corona's'', a photographic agency in Milan. He was involved in various legal pr ...

, television personality. *

Patrizia Reggiani Patrizia Reggiani (; Martinelli; born 2 December 1948) is an Italian convicted criminal and former socialite. She was convicted in a highly publicized trial of hiring a hitman to kill her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci. Early life and marriage t ...

, ex-wife of

Maurizio Gucci Maurizio Gucci (26 September 1948 – 27 March 1995) was an Italian businessman and the one-time head of the Gucci fashion house. He was the son of actor Rodolfo Gucci, and grandson of the company's founder Guccio Gucci. On 27 March 1995, he was ...

. *

Dorothy Gibson Dorothy Gibson (born Dorothy Winifred Brown; May 17, 1889 – February 17, 1946) was a pioneering American silent film actress, artist's model, and singer active in the early 20th century. She is best remembered as a survivor of the sinking o ...

, American actress and ''Titanic'' survivor; escaped the prison with Montanelli and General Bartolo Zambon *

Antonio Gramsci Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a ...

, Italian Marxist intellectual.

References

Bibliography

* Chiara Bricarelli (a cura di), ''Una gioventù offesa. Ebrei genovesi ricordano'' * Luigi Borgomaneri, ''Hitler a Milano: crimini di Theodor Saevecke capo della Gestapo'', Roma, Datanews, 1997. *E. Grottanelli, ''L'amministrazione comunale di Milano e la costruzione del carcere di San Vittore'', in "Storia in Lombardia," quadrimestrale dell'Istituto lombardo per la storia del movimento di liberazione in Italia, Milano, Franco Angeli Editore, anno IV, n. 2, 1985. *Antonio Quatela, "Sei petali di sbarre e cemento", Mursia Editore, Milano, 2013. {{Holocaust Italy Prisons in Italy Buildings and structures in Milan 1879 establishments in Italy