The 19th-century fortress that gives this town its name stands as a stony sentry, perhaps silently guarding a secret: Fortezza may be sitting on a pile of gold.
There are 24 tons of gold missing from the nation's reserves, glimmering ingots that have not been seen since occupying Nazi forces spirited them away.There are reasons to believe those missing bars lie within the massive structure that currently serves as the headquarters of an Italian Alpine brigade, as well as an ammunition warehouse. The for-tress is off-limits to visitors.
Over the years, there have been some perfunctory searches of the fortress, but there has been no major digging beneath the network of underground tunnels.
"We are moving carefully. There's no rush after 50 years. If the gold's there, it couldn't be in a safer place," military investigator Antonino Intelisano said.
The story begins on Sept. 8, 1943. With its army shattered and U.S. forces moving up the Italian peninsula, Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. King Victor Emmanuel III and Premier Pietro Badoglio fled from Rome to Brindisi on the Adriatic coast, while German forces quickly occupied northern and central Italy.
Within three weeks of the surrender, with the Germans occupying Rome, the gold reserves of the Bank of Italy - 119 tons - were shipped by train out of the capital. The ingots were sent first to Milan and then to Fortezza, just 20 minutes on the main railroad line from the Austrian border.
The Italian government, by this time aligned with the Allies, began to suspect that the governor of the Bank of Italy, Vincenzo Azzolini, knew more than he was letting on. It accused him of various transgressions - failing to hide the gold or send it for safekeeping behind Allied lines and, most important, of complicity in its disappearance.
In 1944, after Rome's liberation, Azzolini was arrested, charged with treason and sentenced to die by a special tribunal. Several months later, the sentence was commuted to 30 years. But in 1948, three years after the war ended, he was rehabilitated on the theory that Gestapo officers heading the occupation of the Italian capital had acted alone in swiping the gold.
Immediately after the war, the Allies tracked most of the looted ingots to Germany and Switzerland and returned them to Italy, but 24 tons are still missing, Intelisano said.
"A part of that could be in Fortezza, or there could be nothing there," the prosecutor told The Associated Press. Another possibility is that criminals - Italian, German, or both - made off with it.
The missing gold has become legend in Fortezza, a major railroad junction surrounded by Dolomite peaks in the Alto Adige, a predominantly German-speaking area of Italy that belonged to Austria until World War I.
The town of 900 people is known to the German speakers as Franzensfeste, or Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph's Fort. The fortress sits in an area otherwise known for ski slopes and hiking trails through lush pine forests.
"For years we've been trying to turn the fortress into a museum and hotel complex, but the army won't give it up," said Roberto Bonafe, a local shipping agent.
The Austrians built the fortress in 1838 to protect the railroad and a possible invasion route through the valley from the south. It is an imposing brick structure, with openings for cannons and a rail spur leading right to the main line.
Intelisano said he is ready to order an evacuation of the fortress if the investigation warrants one.
In the past year, a local newspaper, the Alto Adige, has revived interest in the gold.