BBC Rome Welcomes the Allies

This is Godfrit Talbot speaking from Rome. I'm standing in the middle of the Piazza Venetia on this dev'a occupation, and at this moment the windows of the balcony of the Piazza Venetia, from which Mussolini used to make his speeches, the windows have been opened, and has come out onto the balcony.

Not Mussolini, who incidentally has never made any appearance on that balcony since July of last year, not Mussolini, But three Allied soldiers with their steel helmets on and their rifles in their hands beside them two Romans, two people who've gone up from this square, two of the Italian people and those four are standing there

and they're waving the Italian and the Allied flags, a vastly different scene from the ones which that balcony has staged in the past.