French Military Cemetery

The French Monumental Cemetery in Venafro contains the graves of 3414 French soldiers who were killed during the Second World War. Built between September 1945 and December 1946 by the French military engineers, it is the largest in absolute terms among the three French war cemeteries on the Italian soil. The white-coloured graves, arranged according to the religion of the fallen, commemorate French, Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan victims who died during the fight against the aggression of democracy brought by Nazi-fascism.

In particular, the French troops played an important role in the management of the Allied advance along the Gustav Line between December 1943 and March 1944, also coordinating the newly formed 1st Motorised Grouping of the Italian Army for a time.

Venafro was also the scene of a dramatic episode caused by an Allied miscalculation. On the morning of 15 March 1944, expecting to fly over the town of Cassino, due to dense fog, the US Air Force heavily bombed the town centre of Venafrano, causing considerable material damage as well as deaths and injuries. The severity of the miscalculation is even more apparent in the destruction by bombs of the command centre of the British 8th Army and the military hospital of the Moroccan troops.

The Winterline Museum, located in Palazzo De Utris, revives the memory of all those events linked to the importance of Venafro and the Gustav during WWII. The museum, which opened in 2008, houses a permanent display of exhibits of historical interest regarding the passage of the war along the Gustav Line and its straggler lines.