Earlier organisers put the turnout at 80,000.

The march got underway early afternoon, led by ANPI president Gianfranco Pagliarulo, ANPI Milan president Roberto Cenati, Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala and the secretary general of Italy's second trades union confederation Cisl, Luigi Sbarra.

They were followed by a delegation from the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), including PD Secretary Elly Schlein wearing a red ANPI neckerchief, which marched behind a banner reading 'Born of the Resistance'.

Liberation Day is celebrated on April 25 each year, because on that day in 1945, the Nazi-Fascist troops began to retreat from the cities of Milan and Turin.

This was a fatal blow, which gave way to the final victory of the Resistance.

The first Italian cities to be liberated were Bologna (April 21) and Genoa (April 23). The Nazi-Fascists armed forces capitulated on May 3, after signing their surrender on April 29.

In Rome, meanwhile, on Tuesday, ANPI said everyone agreed on the need for Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa to resign after his series of controversial comments relating to Italy's Fascist past.

“What brings us all together? La Russa's resignation,” ANPI Rome president Fabrizio De Santis said at the end of a Liberation Day rally in the capital

“All Fascist associations must be disbanded.”

The statement appeared to come as an indirect reply to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's earlier call on the pages of Corriere della Sera newspaper for the national holiday marking Italy's liberation from Fascism and Nazi occupation to be a moment of "new-found harmony" after days of political wrangling.

In an open letter, Meloni shared “some reflections” that she hoped might “contribute to making this anniversary a moment of rediscovered national harmony, in which the celebration of our newfound freedom helps us understand and strengthen Italy's role in the world as an indispensable bulwark of democracy”.

“I do this with the serenity of one in whom these reflections matured within the ranks of her own political affiliation some 30 years ago", she continued, adding that “the parties representing the right in Parliament declared their incompatibility with any nostalgia for fascism” many years ago.

On Monday ANPI urged the prime minister and leader of right-wing party Brothers of Italy (FdI) to disassociate herself from Fascism after allegedly failing to do so since leading the right to power in Italy in September 2022.

The call came against the backdrop of ongoing controversy involving La Russa, a top FdI powerbroker, in relation to his criticism of a Partisan attack in Rome that triggered the Ardeatine Caves reprisal massacre, a statement on Thursday that Italy's postwar Constitution does not contain the word 'antifascism' and his decision to spend most of Liberation Day commemorating anti-Communist hero Jan Palach in Prague instead of visiting Nazi atrocity sites in Italy.

ANSA