Photo © Franco Beccari

Museums of Lunigiana: which ones to visit

From prehistory to the twentieth century to read and discover the area

by Lunigiana

Visiting the museums of Lunigiana, today included in the provincial network "Terre dei Malaspina e delle Statue Stele", means taking a journey into local history, from Prehistory to the twentieth century, to better understand the experience of the territory and its people.

Today, much of the history and cultural tradition of Lunigiana is in fact contained in the many museums scattered throughout the territory, where the memory of the past and the understanding of the present strengthen each other, passing on the incredible cultural heritage.

Contents

1.

Science Museums
2.

Religious Museums
3.

Museums of Historical Memory

Science Museums

Caves of Equi - Credit: Caves of Equi

Lunigiana Stele Statues Museum (Pontremoli)
The Museum houses a highly evocative collection that tells of one of the most important, and still today one of the most mysterious, phenomena of Lunigiana. Within the evocative setting of the Piagnaro Castle, the iconic Stele Statues have been on display since 1975: anthropomorphic sculptures sculpted in sandstone between 4000 and 600 BC by the populations who lived at that time in the Magra River valley and which, today, constitute the oldest artistic phenomenon of Lunigiana.
Prehistoric Tecchia and Archaeological Museum (Fivizzano)
Visit the Prehistoric Tecchia, a splendid archaeological and paleontological site of international reputation set up with displays containing real finds directly from the excavation area. You can discover this cave where Neanderthals and extinct prehistoric animals lived, such as the Cave Bear. In the Archaeological Museum you can see a reproduction of the Giant Cave Bear, a whole skeleton of an adult bear and other artifacts related to human presence found during excavations in the nearby prehistoric Tecchia.
Museum of Natural History of Lunigiana (Aulla)
Located in the majestic Brunella Fortress, the museum is made up of exhibition rooms that allow us to learn about the close link between human, agricultural and pastoral activity and the natural heritage of Lunigiana.

Religious Museums

Former Augustinian Convent Complex

Museum, Church and Tomb of San Caprasio (Aulla)
Historical and cultural findings belonging, over the centuries, to abbots, monks and pilgrims and the findings of the archaeological excavations of 2003 are preserved inside the Abbey of San Caprasio, still today a fundamental stop on the Via Francigena in Lunigiana.
Former Augustinian Convent Complex (Fivizzano)
Founded with a edict of June 27, 1391, it still preserves places and a priceless heritage: from the Civic Library, with about 30,000 volumes, to the Edmondo Bernacca Weather Museum; from the Church of San Giovanni to the Museum of Sacred Art, with works collected in the sacred buildings of the area; up to the cloister of the Convent, decorated with wonderful seventeenth-century frescoes.

Museums of Historical Memory

Audiovisual Museum of the Resistance - Credit: Museo Audiovisivo della Resistenza

Ethnographic Museum of Lunigiana (Villafranca in Lunigiana)
The peasant and pastoral tradition of Lunigiana expertly set up and told in the ancient sixteenth-century mills on the Bagnone stream.
Digital Museum of Local culture (Fivizzano)
Navigating on an interactive website you will discover the activities that have characterized the lives of the inhabitants of the Lucido Valley: working marble, arrival of the railway, rural world, relationship with nature, caves and Tecchia of Equi, thermal baths and manifestations of social life.
Archive Museum of Memory (Bagnone)
Since 2004 it has preserved and valorised the artistic, historical and documentary heritage of the Bagnone valley, narrating the gender relationship in the social world of Lunigiana through photos and testimonies.
Emigration Museum of Tuscan People (Mulazzo)
Set up in the rooms of Lusuolo Castle, it is dedicated to the phenomenon of the emigration of the Tuscan population around the world and through photographs, objects and documents tells the stories of those who left in search of fortune and a better life.
Malaspina Museum Archive (Mulazzo)
In the palace and ancient residence of the Marquise Malaspina of Mulazzo, there is the museum dedicated to the family and to the great sailor Alessandro Malaspina, whose objects, books, manuscripts and navigation instruments are preserved here.
Audiovisual Museum of the Resistance (Fosdinovo)
Built in a centuries-old chestnut grove, a battleground during the Liberation period, it aims to remember and convey suffering and hopes of those who fought along the Gothic Line during the Second World War.