There is a stretch of the Regina state road,between Musso and Dongo,where in April 1945 the history of Italy came to a halt. In a few hours,on that kilometre of asphalt at water's edge,fascism ends,Mussolini is captured,and a treasure disappears that no one,for eighty years,has ever been able to find in its entirety.

They call it the gold of Dongo. And it is the most documented and yet most unresolved mystery of Lake Como: no ghosts or curses are needed here. The court records,the trials,and the bodies pulled from the lake are enough.

This is the fourth instalment of the series on the mysteries of Lake Como. After the source of Pliny,the 'cursed' island,and the monster of 1946,we change register: this time the true crime surpasses any legend. As always: with rigour,separating document from village rumour.

At dawn on 27 April 1945,a column of 38 German trucks,accompanied by civilian cars carrying Republican Social officials fleeing towards Switzerland,is blocked at Musso by the partisans of the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade.

Around 4 pm,in the square at Dongo,during the inspection of the vehicles,a man wearing a German non-commissioned officer's coat is recognised: it is Benito Mussolini. The person who takes him into custody is the brigade's deputy commissioner Urbano Lazzaro,'Bill',who escorts him to the town hall. In the bag Mussolini is carrying: four folders of highly classified documents,one million seven hundred thousand lire in cheques,and one hundred and sixty gold sovereigns.

But this is only the beginning. On the trucks and cars of the column,including the Alfa Romeo belonging to prefect Luigi Gatti,formerly Mussolini's secretary,suitcases full of gold,jewellery,currency and securities come to light: the wealth that the ministers and officials of the dying RSI had taken with them.

This is where the key figure of the whole affair enters the scene: Luigi Canali,known as 'Captain Neri',chief of staff of the brigade. A native of Como,a former officer,a frontline partisan.

Neri does something methodical,which will cost him his life: he orders all the luggage to be gathered in the town hall and draws up an inventory of the valuables. Custody is entrusted,with a written order,to his partner and partisan courier: Giuseppina Tuissi,'Gianna'.

On 28 April,in the late afternoon,the same day as Mussolini's execution at Giulino di Mezzegra,a few kilometres further south,Neri signs a temporary handover order for all the inventoried assets to the Communist federation of Como,led by Dante Gorreri.

Temporary. That is the last certain trace of the treasure.

What happens next reads as if written by a novelist without mercy. We summarise it with dates,because the dates are what is frightening.

7 May 1945. Captain Neri disappears. His body was never found. According to judicial reconstructions,he was opposed to the loot going to a single party rather than to the Corps of Volunteers for Freedom,and he held the inventory.

22 June 1945. 'Gianna',who had begun asking questions about the fate of her companion and had been warned to stop,is killed and thrown into the lake near Cernobbio. She was twenty-two years old.

5 July 1945. The body of Anna Maria Bianchi,friend and confidante of Gianna,surfaces from the lake: drowned after being tortured and shot twice with a revolver.

The following night. Anna Maria's father,Michele Bianchi,who had demanded answers about his daughter's death,is killed with two shots to the back of the head.

And in 1947 a journalist,Franco De Agazio,who was investigating the affair,is also killed,murdered in Milan.

Anyone who touches the gold,or the questions about the gold,comes to a bad end. No episcopal curse is needed this time: the Comacina formula,'violent death to those who return',is fulfilled here by human hand.

Justice tries,slowly. On 12 December 1949,among others,Dante Gorreri is committed for trial,as the instigator of Neri's murder and for appropriating and concealing the gold,along with Pietro Vergani,named as the instigator of the murders of Gianna and the Bianchi family.

Gorreri spends four years in prison; in 1953 he is elected as a member of parliament on the PCI lists and,thanks to parliamentary immunity,goes free.

On 29 April 1957,before the Court of Assizes in Padua,the official venue chosen on grounds of legitimate suspicion,the trial for the disappearance of the gold of Dongo and the related crimes finally opens: around thirty defendants,months of hearings,reluctant witnesses,memories suddenly fragile.

The proceedings drag on through the summer and break off without reaching a verdict on the merits: amid a Cold War climate,amnesties and statutes of limitations,no court has ever officially established where the gold of Dongo ended up,nor who ordered those deaths. The records remain: the judicial truth does not.

And here we come to the legendary part,which in this case grows from real events.

The historically most solid hypotheses tell of a treasure divided and dispersed through political channels: some portion certainly passed through the Communist federation of Como (receipts included); documents which,as it happens,were never found.

The romantic hypotheses,instead,look to the water: crates lowered into the lake between Musso and Dongo in the confused nights of late April,to be recovered 'later'. For decades there have been tales of night dives,of fishermen finding gold sovereigns in their nets,of recoveries never declared.

No discovery has ever been genuinely documented. But the stretch of lake in front of Dongo is deep,and the bed of Lake Como,as we know from the episode on the Lariosaur,has never been fully explored.

Between the two versions,the documents point decisively to the first. The lake,however,keeps selling better.

The Museum of the End of the War,at Palazzo Manzi,right on the square in Dongo: a well-made multimedia museum,built around the real locations of the capture. You leave with clearer ideas and an extra shiver.

Musso,a few minutes away: the point where the column was halted,beneath the cliff of the Sasso di Musso,the same cliff as the fortress of Medeghino,which would deserve a whole episode of its own.

Giulino di Mezzegra,heading south: the place where Mussolini and Claretta Petacci were shot,marked by a cross.

Le Tre Pievi (Dongo,Gravedona,Sorico): the same three that in 1169 took part in the destruction of Comacina. On this shore history never passes by chance.

The best way to arrive is along the Regina state road or by ferry from Como; in the summer months,the motor vessel allows you to see the entire scene of events from the water.

What is the gold of Dongo? The collection of valuables (gold,currency,jewellery,securities) seized on 27 April 1945 from Mussolini's column and the fleeing officials,stopped by the partisans between Musso and Dongo. Most of those assets were never officially recovered.

Who was Captain Neri? Luigi Canali,chief of staff of the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade: he inventoried the treasure and ordered its temporary handover to the Communist federation of Como. He disappeared on 7 May 1945; his body was never found.

Who was the partisan Gianna? Giuseppina Tuissi,partisan courier and companion of Neri,the person who physically held the valuables. She was killed on 22 June 1945 and thrown into the lake near Cernobbio after investigating his disappearance.

Was there ever a trial? Yes: it opened at the Court of Assizes in Padua on 29 April 1957,but stalled without a verdict on the merits. Neither the fate of the treasure nor the instigators of the murders have ever been definitively established.

Is the treasure in the lake? No documented discovery exists. The most credible reconstructions indicate that the treasure was dispersed through political channels; the hypothesis of sunken crates remains a legend,however persistent.

In this series we have dismantled an episcopal curse and scaled down a monster. Here the opposite happens: the more you dig into the documents,the darker the story becomes.

On one side the established facts: a column stopped,a signed inventory,a 'temporary' handover,four deaths in two months,a trial held twelve years later that came to nothing.

On the other side the legend,almost consoling: the gold sleeping at the bottom of the lake,intact,waiting for a lucky diver.

The truth,as always,is more precise than the myth. And in this case it is also more bitter: the real abyss of the gold of Dongo is not the 400 metres of water in front of the shore,but the silence of those who knew.

Take care,and keep your eyes open.

This is the fourth instalment of the series on the mysteries of Lake Como. If you enjoyed it,please share it: the next chapter of history is already in the making.