St. Anna Distezama Museum of Art

About

Sant'Anna di Stazzema is a mountain village in the municipality of Stazzema, in the province of Lucca, Tuscany, and the site where on August 12, 1944 the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division massacred about 560 civilians. Around 130 of the victims were children; the youngest, Anna Pardini, was only twenty days old. In 2005 the military tribunal of La Spezia sentenced ten former SS soldiers to life imprisonment, a verdict upheld by the Court of Cassation in 2007. The village's former elementary school houses the Historical Museum of the Resistance, opened in the autumn of 1982 in the presence of President Pertini and reopened in February 2007 with the present display arranged in thematic sections. In 2000, under Law No. 381, the area was designated the National Park of Peace, dedicated to preserving memory and promoting peace education.