Benito Mussolini's country home has been sold by his heirs and is to become a museum.

The Villa Carpena was sold with its contents, including Il Duce's bed and desk, for a reported $A1.9 million to developers. The house, near Forli in the Emilia Romagna region, had been in the family since World War I.

The purchasers, Immobiliare Carpena, a firm set up especially to buy the villa, said that they were not fascist sympathisers but businessmen with a keen interest in memorabilia from the period. They plan to open the villa to visitors later this month as a "house of memories" and to scholars who wish to study Mussolini's papers.

It was at the villa that he read his newspapers in the gazebo, while his wife, Donna Rachaele, prepared homemade pasta in the kitchen. Their two youngest children, Romano and Anna Maria, were both born there.

Over the years the villa became a symbol of the Mussolini regime. After the dictator's death in 1945, Donna Rachaele continued to live there. Her eldest son, Vittorio, lived there until his death in 1997. He was survived by his widow, Monica, who then lived there on her own until recently.