As Hitler’s armed forces marched through Poland and Hungary, as messages of hatred and anti-Semitism rang high, the Italian frontier wasn’t exempt from its effects. Across the Genoese border, formidable walls of concrete rose up from the soil to protect the Portofino Peninsula.

With time, Punta Chiappa’s blueprint was laid out, one of four assigned to the security of the factories and industrial treasures along the gulf of Genoa. Boring through the hillside and slopes by the shoreline were dimly lit communication tunnels to keep whispered secrets in the shadows. Bunkers of reinforced concrete were dug out in wait of ranks of soldiers in camouflage that never came. Yet it all fell to the Wehrmacht and RSI in 1943 without a single pontoon fired, Punta Chiappa eerily silent since the moment it was brought into existence.

These moments, though a mere scratch in the past, can still be felt when one walks through the bunkers and grounds of Punta Chiappa. Finally, its walls ring with the sound of footsteps half a century after the end of the war.