Memory Archive Museum in Bagnone
An invaluable collection of objects and testimonies that tell the history of the area
Entering the Memory Archive Museum in Bagnone, a small village in Lunigiana, you set off on a true journey through time: in its immersive rooms, videos, stories and photographs bring to life the stories of inhabitants of this village and the entire valley.
Bagnone still preserves the ancient and more recent memory of the local population through the great work of digitizing photographs and documents, researching and collecting audio and video testimonies.
A story organized in multiple spaces, located in different points of the historic center.
The historical archive
In Piazza Marconi, the 17th-century Historical Archive and the adjacent museum rooms tell the medieval and modern history of Bagnone.
The thematic itineraries link the museum to the territory, expanding into the Natural and Cultural Park of Bagnone Valley, and thanks to temporary exhibitions, cartographic documents and exhibitions, the anthropological aspects of the work, economy and religiosity of Bagnone community over time are now documented.
The museum of memory
The most recent researches, preserved in the Museum in Piazza Roma, focuses on the Twentieth Century and the migratory phenomenon that involved the entire valley.
Thanks to the shots of the photographer Paolo Raffaelli, and the photographs made available by Bagnone families, the history of the territory and its community was reconstructed, from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century, with particular attention to the role of women and the Barsane: migrants and traders from Bagnone who moved, first seasonally and then more permanently, to northern Italy and Europe to make a fortune selling trinkets and household items.
The story of migration to the United States is also told here, in particular towards California, where a small community of Bagnone origins is still present today.
The plaster cast gallery
However, the Museum is also a plaster cast gallery: not only dedicated to the history of inhabitants of Bagnone, but also to the artistic development of this village, narrated through the exhibition of the preparatory plaster casts for the creation of the frieze of Quartieri Theater, a former work club.
The works, sculpted in the fascist era by Augusto Magli, a famous sculptor from La Spezia, illustrate the crafts of the countryside and a personification of Bagnone stream, which flows between the castle and the market village, crossing the entire valley.
