Museum of the History and Transformation of the Landscape

The first landscape museum in Abruzzo: one exhibition building and fourteen waymarked itineraries out in the countryside. The museum is the valley itself.

The story

This is a museum system unlike any other, in two essential parts. The first, more informative and explanatory, is on the ground floor of the Iuvanum Archaeological Museum at Montenerodomo, where the various subjects connected with the landscape are set out and examined through panels, photographs, diagrams, objects and collections, offering a historical and ethnographic account of the interaction between people and environment from the earliest times to the present day.

The second part is more about use: the many itineraries identified across the land of more than sixteen municipalities belonging to the two mountain communities between the Sangro, the Aventino and the eastern Maiella, which visitors can follow to go deeper into particular subjects or themes already raised in the display.

All the routes, with their particular features, have been summarised on a single general map that is easy to consult. Those already laid out and equipped — more than fourteen — are waymarked and explained by panels set along each itinerary, such as the one around Roccascalegna castle.

What the system takes in

• The Gypsum Museum at Gessopalena (a documentation centre), in the medieval village;
• the Sweet Pepper Museum at Altino (a documentation centre), in the historic centre, at Palazzo Rossetti;
• the Museum of the Cooks at Villa Santa Maria (a documentation centre), at Palazzo Caracciolo;
• the permanent exhibition on the “History of an Apennine community, that of Montenerodomo, from the Italic period to the modern age”, which can be visited in the rooms below the town hall of Montenerodomo;
• the travelling exhibition “Le Colture d'Alta Quota” (High-Altitude Crops), kept at Pizzoferrato;
• the travelling exhibition “Stock-rearing and wool working in the Aventino and Sangro valleys”, at the seat of the mountain community in Palena;
• the travelling exhibition on the “White truffle of the Medio Sangro mountain community”, kept in the town hall of Quadri.

A model that has been followed

The museum system has drawn the attention of German scholars, who wrote about it in the volume “Museum revisited — Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf eine Institution im Wandel”, edited by Kurt Dröge and Detlef Hoffmann.