Beach Head War Cemetery

The Commonwealth War Cemetery at Anzio — officially the Beach Head War Cemetery — holds the graves of over 2,300 soldiers from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other Allied nations who died in the Italian Campaign. The CWGC maintains the grounds with the quiet precision that characterises all its sites: white headstones in even rows, the grass immaculate, and a register of the dead available at the entrance.

The cemetery sits on the edge of town, easy to reach on foot from the harbour. Visit alongside the much larger Sicily–Rome American Cemetery in nearby Nettuno for a full picture of the human cost of the Anzio campaign. Together they contain the remains of more than 10,000 Allied soldiers.

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The Anzio beachhead landings of January 1944 were supposed to be a quick outflanking move that would crack open the German defences south of Rome. Instead they produced four months of brutal stalemate. More than 7,000 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the fighting are buried here, on a low hillside above the coast where they landed.

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