Discovering the Ecomuseum of Lake Orta. The Ecomuseum of Lake Orta and Mottarone, also called Ecomuseo Cusius, is a museum with multiple cultural proposals, operating in the Cusio – Mottarone area. It is located in one of the most unmistakable places in our country, where you will also find the top Italian lakes villas. 

Unlike a traditional museum, the latter turns out to be a museum of time and space: of time because it does not favor particular and defined historical sections, but contains both finds from the past and objects from the present, and projections towards the future; space because it is the whole territory that speaks of itself, with its own environmental and cultural characteristics. The structure is today considered a local reference center to which not only scientific and didactic / educational research activities are linked, but also that of economic, social and environmental interest.

A BIT OF HIHISTORY

Ecomuseo del Lago d’Orta and Mottarone has now taken altitude for 23 years. If desired, public and private bodies moved by the desire to create an eco-museum of the material culture of the territory of Cusio, Mottarone and Valle Strona. The Piedmont Region decided one year after its birth, I enter into a ten-year agreement with the Association for the management of the Ecomuseum of Lake Orta and Mottarone. It is a more open and participatory management of the initiative: the local population personally participates in enriching the collections of objects thus contributing to the collection and documentation of local testimonies, traditions, customs, customs. In addition to supporting the initiatives of each member, the ecomuseum also deals with projects and activities of common interest. Involved fully in the work of the Ecomuseum there is a team of expert collaborators in the various sectors, who deals with the study of the territory. They are geologists, naturalists, archaeologists, historians, architects, art historians, ethnographers, anthropologists.

THE PURPOSE

The purpose of the ecomuseum recalls the definition given by George Henry Rivière at the time: “The ecomuseum is a cultural institution that permanently ensures the search functions on a given territory, with the participation of the population, , presentation, enhancement of a set of natural and cultural assets, representative of an environment and of the ways of life that follow one another “. Here, therefore, deals with the reconstruction, the testimony and the enhancement of historical memory. There is no lack of references to material culture, to the relationships between the natural and man-made environment, to traditions.

But also to the activities and ways in which the traditional settlement has characterized the formation and evolution of the landscape. Finally, it aims to protect and promote the distinctive characteristics of the territory, so as to make available to the public all the means to put in place a visit that is aware of the places that best illustrate it.