Seventy-five years ago in Fascist Italy, a group of gay men were labelled "degenerate", expelled from their homes and interned on an island. They were held under a prison regime - but some found life in the country's first openly gay community a liberating experience.
Every summer, tourists are drawn to the beauty of a tiny string of rocky islands in the Adriatic.
But just recently a group of visitors came to the Tremiti archipelago not so much to enjoy the peace and calm of this remote place as to remember.
These were gay, lesbian and transgender rights activists.
They had come to hold a small ceremony during which they would mark a shameful episode that unfolded in the islands more than 70 years ago.
Back in the late 1930s the archipelago played a part in the effort by Benito Mussolini's Fascists to suppress homosexuality.
Gay men undermined the image that the dictator wanted to project of Italian manhood.
"Fascism is a virile regime. So the Italians are strong, masculine, and it's impossible that homosexuality can exist in a Fascist regime," says professor of history at the University of Bergamo, Lorenzo Benadusi.
So the strategy was to cover up the issue as much as possible.
