It was a refrain bearing history, drawn from a century-old Italian protest song, which has long been a global tune of resistance. Others point to a separate folk song sung by "mondine" — female rice paddy weeders in Northern Italy — protesting against harsh labor conditions. They described "Bella Ciao" as a "portable monument" — a cultural artifact that carries memory across time and space. "Bella Ciao is continuously rewritten, reused, and relocated in different and new contexts and media, and for a range of causes," they wrote. Pro-choice protesters in Poland repurposed 'Bella Ciao' in 2020 Image: Michal Fludra/NurPhoto/picture-allianceFrom resistance to remixesThough not widely sung during World War II itself, "Bella Ciao" defined how Italians stood up to fascism after the war.