From creepy clowns to witchy old ladies, the Florence Serial Killer Museum (FSKM) is sure to satisfy all true crime aficionados. It’s located on via Torta 4R, in the dungeons of Palazzo Lenzoni de’ Medici, and is the brainchild of Filippo Terzani, a curator, and Luca Pianesi, an entrepreneur. It first opened in via Cavour in 2006, where it stayed until 2010, only to be reborn before the holidays. The museum hosts a series of wax representations of serial killers, usually displayed in their habitat.

“Not everyone is aware that Italy is the second country in the world for serial killings,” says Filippo Terzani. And in fact the museum dedicates significant space to this national “phenomenon”, starting with Cesare Lombroso. “He is the father of modern criminology. He operated during the time of Jack the Ripper. He had some strange theories based on the morphology of criminals’ skulls. His theories don’t hold a lot of water today, but he got the ball rolling.”
But a conversation about serial killers in Florence is incomplete without mentioning one of the most sensational cases to be etched into the national consciousness. Against the backdrop of the Florentine hills, the Monster of Florence struck seven times between 1974 and 1985, and had a very specific target. In conservative 1970s Italy, it was seen as indecent for young couples to sleep under the same roof, so it was common to drive to a secluded spot to get some privacy. This practice gave birth to a whole depraved subculture of voyeurs: older men equipped with night vision binoculars who hid in the bushes to watch. It’s quite likely that the Monster moved around this group of people. On moonless nights, the Monster would approach the couple, shoot them and, with surgical precision, cut a “trophy” from the woman’s body parts.
The murders immediately started a furore, and the manhunt began. FBI experts came to Florence to teach the police the latest forensic techniques. The case remains a mystery, but many hypotheses have been put forward, with everyone in Florence having an opinion. Was it someone from the so-called Sardinian trail, involved in similar double homicides in 1968? Some say it was an aristocrat, who hired goons to collect depraved trophies for himself. Or a doctor, who required these fetishes for satanic rituals. There was even a journalist insisting that an American living in Florence, Joe Bevilacqua, was both the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac Killer.
But the most important trail is the one that, in 1991, led to Pietro Pacciani, the farmer and ex-partisan from Mercatale, who was in jail for sexually assaulting his own daughters. Pacciani was the ideal suspect, despicable, already imprisoned for a depraved crime, and who had, in 1951, murdered a man in a jealous rage, an act for which he had spent eight years in prison. But the evidence against him was flimsy at best. The most convincing proof was a shell casing found by the police in his vegetable patch, in front of TV cameras no less, which—it turned out—had been planted.

The trial that followed was a treasure trove of dark humour, launching an endless amount of Tuscan “memes”. Mario Vanni, Giancarlo Lotti, Fernando Pucci and Giovanni Faggi were implicated alongside Pacciani. When Vanni was interrogated as a witness, he was asked what he did for a living: “I just went to have some snacks with Pacciani, no?” This iconic reply led to the media branding the group “compagni di merende”, or snack buddies, an expression that has since entered the Italian lexicon in reference to a group of nefarious accomplices. Later, the frail, old Vanni, with the meanest of looks on his face, claimed he wanted “freedom to go to the bank and the post office. Then it will be up to the Lord to punish Mr. Canessa (the prosecutor) with an incurable malady. Long live the Duce, labor and freedom! We’ll be back!” before being hauled away by police while immediately turning back into a pitiful old man and sullenly saying, “I will go away. It doesn’t matter. I’m so lonely anyways.”
Meanwhile, Pacciani painted himself as a virtuous old man (“as innocent as Christ on the cross”), extracting a photo of Jesus from his pocket, while crying and exclaiming “Jesus is my brother!” But the highlight of the trial was when Pacciani interrupted his deposition to recite a little poem he’d written: “If more good existed in the world, and we all treated each other like brothers, there would be fewer worries and fewer pains, and the world would be much more beautiful.” After this banal display, he was brought back down to earth by the judge: “Nice, we agree, but we’re now in criminal court, and you’re accused of 16 murders.”

Pacciani passed away in 1998 before the end of the trial. Vanni and Lotti spent the rest of their lives in prison, largely incriminated by the testimony of Fernando Pucci, who was allowed to bear witness, despite suffering from intellectual disability as public pressure mounted to punish someone for the crimes. The case caused a major shift in cultural mores, as fear of the Monster caused parents to allow their kid’s partners to sleep over. FSKM contains a wax representation of Pietro Pacciani, pictured defiantly at his trial, pointing his finger at prosecutors. “Pacciani is not a confirmed serial killer, but a suspect in the case. But we couldn’t omit him,” says Terzani.
If these topics have tickled the morbid part of your brain and you would like to learn more while immersing yourself in a strikingly creepy atmosphere, FSKM features an in-depth audio guide to explain all the macabre details. It’s open seven days a week from 11am to 9pm.