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The Partisans’ Phone
It journeyed more through time than across distance, and today rests at the Gotica Toscana Museum in Ponzalla. But in 1944, this German field telephone carried one of the most eagerly awaited messages by an entire city: the order for Florence’s uprising.
It’s small, made of black Bakelite, with military stamps embossed on the lid.
Today, that telephone is preserved at MUGOT – Museo Gotica Toscana – thanks to the gesture of Gabriella Breri, daughter of Erio Breri, the Florentine municipal policeman who hid it between the Uffizi and Palazzo Vecchio during the most dramatic days of the Nazi-Fascist occupation. Together with the device, Gabriella also donated the reel of telephone cable (made in England) that enabled the connection through the Vasari Corridor, a metal tube used to lower the messages and the canvas tape – made from a machine-gun belt – with which they were retrieved. Together, these objects tell a true story, hidden among the walls of Florence and the folds of war.
Five Days Undercover
It was 6 August 1944. Florence remained divided— the Arno River ran the length of the front line. The bridges had been blown up, but the Vasari Corridor, miraculously spared, became the partisans’ secret passage. The first to traverse it was Enrico Fisher, commander of the III Company of “Justice and Freedom.” Immediately afterward, the cable was laid. From that moment on, Breri and other municipal officers—still in uniform—became “clandestine switchboard operators.” Using a German field telephone, they linked the partisans inside the city center to the Allied forces across the river.
Breri hid in the Arnolfo Tower, then relocated to the Uffizi. He slept little and stayed perpetually on guard. On August 7, a German patrol pushed as far as the corridor; the team swiftly dismantled the entire system. No one was discovered. A few hours later, communications resumed—and they continued until August 10, when the line carried the key phrase: “Pronti per l’insurrezione”The next day, the Martinella bell of Palazzo Vecchio rang out the signal for the uprising. Florence was free once again.
An Important Legacy: The Invisible Thread
The story has lived on thanks to Breri’s meticulous diary—now in the hands of his daughter, Gabriella, along with the original artifacts. For decades he kept everything in his home, knowing that one day it would serve to tell the tale. And so it did.
Now “the Freedom Phone,” as MUGOT has dubbed it, is part of the museum’s Liberation exhibition.
A silent object, yes, but more eloquent than many tales. When you see it, you sense that “invisible thread” binding caution to hope, technique to courage. A thread that crossed the Arno—and, above all, the conscience of those who chose to do what was right.