Strage di Piazza Fontana

Piazza Fontana bombing
Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura building, inside of which the terrorist bombing in Piazza Fontana was carried out on 12 December 1969. (Picture taken on 12 December 2007).
Location	Piazza Fontana, Milan, Italy
Date	12 December 1969 16:37 (UTC+1)
Target	Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura
Attack type	Mass murder, bombing
Weapons	Bomb
Deaths	17
Non-fatal injuries	88
Perpetrators	Carlo Digilio (member of Ordine Nuovo), other unknown ON members

The Piazza Fontana Bombing (Italian: Strage di Piazza Fontana) was a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura (National Agrarian Bank) in Piazza Fontana (some 200 metres from the Duomo) in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found unexploded.

On 25 April 1969 a bomb exploded at the Fiat booth at a Milan trade fair, in which five people were injured. There was also a bomb discovered at the city's central station. The explosion at Piazza Fontana was not the first, but part of a well-coordinated series of attacks.

The Piazza Fontana bombing was initially attributed to anarchists. After over 80 arrests were made, suspect Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist railway worker, died after falling from the fourth floor window of the police station where he was being held. Serious discrepancies existed in the police account, which initially maintained that Pinelli had committed suicide by leaping from the window during a routine interrogation session. Three police officers interrogating Pinelli, including Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, were put under investigation in 1971 for his death, but a later inquiry filed October 25, 1975 concluded that there were no wrongdoings regarding Pinelli's death: public prosecutor Gerardo D'Ambrosio established that his fall had been caused by fainting and losing balance.

Despite being exonerated, the far-left organisation Lotta Continua held Calabresi of being responsible for the death of Pinelli, and in 1972 he was murdered by left-wing militants in revenge. Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani, former leaders of Lotta Continua, were convicted of plotting Calabresi's assassination, while members Ovidio Bompressi and Leonardo Marino were sentenced for carrying it out.

Anarchist Pietro Valpreda was also arrested after a taxi driver, called Cornelio Rolandi, identified him as the suspicious-looking client he had taken to the bank that day. After his alibi was judged insufficient, he was held for three years in preventive detention before being sentenced for the crime. In 1987 he was acquitted by the supreme Court of Cassation for lack of evidence.