Museo della Civiltà delle Malghe

About the museum

Mendatica, in the upper Arroscia valley, is a village with a pastoral tradition: most of its hamlets once served as summer pastures (malghe) for shepherds. The village’s ethnographic museum tells this story across several sites scattered through the settlement, conceived as a dispersed museum.

The Casa del Pastore (Shepherd’s House) recreates the rooms of a typical two-storey pasture dwelling: on the ground floor the stable, with the objects used for tending livestock and making cheese, and upstairs the kitchen with its central hearth and the bedroom. A smaller site, the Vecchie Prigioni (Old Prisons) on Via Giovanni XXIII, displays everyday objects from the past, from cooking pots to footwear, lanterns and inkwells; in the sixteenth century its two cells held prisoners awaiting trial.

The route also includes the fauna museum with specimens of local wildlife, which since 2024 also houses the Stanza del Volo (Flight Room); the museum of historical cartography, with reproductions of maps from the 16th to the 18th century (currently being redone); and an open-air museum along a carruggio (narrow village alley), with panels on traditions, legends, milk processing and the transhumance routes.

Highlights

• Casa del Pastore with reconstructed stable, kitchen and bedroom
• Vecchie Prigioni with everyday objects
• Fauna museum with the Stanza del Volo
• Museum of historical cartography (being redone)
• Open-air museum of traditions along a village carruggio

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