The Valley Museums

In Macugnaga, various, characteristic museums offer tourists the chance to get to know the customs and costumes of the Walser, the people of Germanic origin that, beginning in 1200, settled at the foot of Monte Rosa giving life first to the Macugnaga community and slowly, slowly to all the other Walser communities around Monte Rosa.

The Walser House Museum, located in the Borca municipal district, is a genuine residence of the era, still complete with all the furnishings and objects that characterised it in the past. You can visit every room in the house, along a path that lets you retrace, with your gaze and imagination, the life of the Walser people.

The Mountain Museum, in the centre of Staffa, and the Smuggling Museum, are not to be missed. The latter’s aim is to recount the centuries-old history of Alpine smuggling, which is shared by all the border mountains and that is now consigned to history. It’s a unique museum in Italy and in Europe that, through black-and-white images, restores one of the most characteristic phenomena of the valleys between Italy and Switzerland to living memory.

Linked to a past era, the Guia Gold Mine Museum, located in the Borca municipal district, is the first mine in the Alps open to visitors as well as the first mine-museum in Italy. Along a completely lighted path of 1.5 km, you can relive the history of a tiring occupation and get to know the techniques and methods for extracting gold.