Italy marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January with hundreds of commemorative events on the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Established in 2005 by the UN to commemorate the day in 1945 that the survivors of Auschwitz were liberated by the Russian army, the initiative honours the memory of the millions of Jews – but also homosexuals, Romany people and others – who suffered persecution, deportation, imprisonment and genocide.

Ahead of the Giorno della Memoria, new stolpersteine Holocaust memorial stones were unveiled in Rome as well as other Italian cities including Milan, Venice, Florence, Trieste and Genoa. The bronze-capped cobblestones, whose name translates as "stumbling stones", are part of a major European-wide project begun by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1997.