Bologna train station bombing of 1980

Bologna train station bombing of 1980, terrorist attack on the Bologna Centrale railway station in Bologna, Italy, on August 2, 1980, that killed 85 people and injured more than 200. Members of an Italian neofascist group were convicted of murder and other charges connected to the bombing, although the full truth and identification of those behind the bombing may never be known.

On an August Saturday morning in 1980, at 10:25, the air-conditioned Centrale station waiting room was filled with people seeking to travel on holiday away from the summer heat. In this confined space, a suitcase time bomb packed with high-quality TNT collapsed the ceiling on everyone inside, destroyed most of the main station building, and wrecked the Ancona-to-Chiasso express train at platform one. Hundreds lay dead and injured in the rubble, and Italy was shaken to its core.

From the start, official investigations were mired in disinformation. Only with hindsight can partial truth be disentangled from conspiracy theory. The bombing took place during a long period of political violence from both far-left and far-right organizations in Italy known as the Years of Lead. Though at first it was thought that a boiler had exploded, the search for evidence soon revealed the bomb. Within weeks, arrest warrants were issued for 28 members of two militant neofascist organizations. The first trial did not begin until 1987, and the following year Francesca Mambro and Valerio Fioravanti and two others were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Those four and a further four were convicted of being members of an armed gang. On appeal, Mambro and Fioravanti were acquitted of murder in 1990, but in a new trial that began in 1993 they were again convicted and sentenced to life in prison, a verdict that was upheld in 1995. Numerous others went through a similar process of trials and retrials, with varying outcomes on such charges as forming armed gangs and interfering with the investigation.

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Also in 1987, Licio Gelli and others were convicted of planting false leads, including a second bomb “found” in Bologna station in 1981, to implicate a different group of right-wing terrorists. Gelli was the leader of Propaganda Due (P2), a clandestine right-wing breakaway Masonic lodge that was believed to be complicit in the bombing plot.

In 1990 declassified documents began to emerge suggesting that both NATO and the CIA were intimately involved with a “parallel” army, part of NATO’s anti-communist European network, known in Italy as Gladio; this organization has also been suspected of involvement with the Bologna train station bombing. Fioravanti’s unconditional release from prison in 2009 despite his refusal to admit guilt lent credence to the belief that there was government involvement in the act of terrorism. Over the years, new investigations into the bombing have been opened, and new trials have taken place. In 2022, Paolo Bellini, a member of a different right-wing organization than that of most of the earlier defendants, was convicted of having been the person who left the suitcase bomb in the waiting room.

The Bologna bombing was Europe’s deadliest terrorist attack until the Madrid train bombings of 2004.