Built in the years 1877/83, it had as its first name Forte Casetta Mattei because it was built on land owned by the dukes Mattei di Giove
It is now partly occupied by a military depot, as many other forts, and is permeated with a sinister reputation for having being used during the fascist period and during the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1943/44 for the executions of regime opponents
It was reopened in 2009 as PARK OF THE MARTYRS OF FORTE BRAVETTA and in 2011 it was decided to install a Museum of Memory in the buildings
Near the entrance is the 1967 MEMORIAL TO THE FALLEN to remember the seventy-seven people shot here a lot of them after a show trial at the German military tribunal in Via Lucullo. On the monument however there are only sixty-two names and one of them (Branko Bittler also known as Walter Branco) appears twice
The heroic priest Don Giuseppe Morosini was also shot here. His death inspired Roberto Rossellini for the 1945 movie "Roma città aperta" (Rome open city)
"He was a military chaplain and had joined the Resistance after the German occupation. (...) He got the whole plan of the German defense in the Cassino front, which he was able to transmit to the Allies. Betrayed for 70 thousand liras, on January 4, 1944 he was arrested and brutally tortured in the prison of Regina Coeli. He was taken to Fort Bravetta on April 3rd to be shot. The firing squad, consisting of a department of the Italian Police of Africa, had a lot of difficulties in shooting a priest and 10 of the 12 soldiers fired into the air. It took an SS officer to blow the coup de grace" (Anthony Majanlahti and Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi)
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