MUVEL | Museo Diffuso Velva

THE VELVA DIFFUSE MUSEUM OF RURAL CULTURE

Built according to the model of a diffuse museum, it is divided into a series of exhibition spaces, located in various buildings in the historic centre, which allow the artefacts, tools and utensils to remain in their original environment.
The itinerary for visiting the museum thus becomes at the same time a journey through the evocative historical and cultural heritage of the village of Velva.

This website has been realized with other interventions for the MuVel in the framework of the Racine project financed by the Interreg Italy-France Maritime 2014-2020 programme in agreement with the Liguria Region.

THE LANDSCAPE

Velva is situated at 410 metres above sea level in the upper part of Val Petronio, a very open and well exposed valley, behind Sestri Levante. Chestnut trees dominate the vegetation and there is evidence of their presence since the early Middle Ages, particularly on the left-hand side of the valley (Vasca and San Nicolao areas). In the lower part of the valley, it is the olive grove that characterises the landscape, although vineyards are widespread in all the hamlets. The landscape is classically Ligurian due to the action of man, with a large part of the terraced slopes.

OUR HISTORY

The territory, its cultural heritage and the settled community have represented the main reference factors that have guided, in each phase, the constitution of MuVel.
The founding concept is that of the Museo Diffuso, where the historical centre of a village – that of Velva – becomes not only the container, but an integral part of the museum itself, hosting within the characteristic rooms of the buildings – such as old cellars, “fondi”, basements and domestic environments – the various exhibition sites concerning specific moments and themes of the traditional cultural reality.
The museum aims to illustrate, through the exhibition of objects, equipment and environments – supported by documents, images, multimedia and audiovisual supports – the cultural context of the daily life of a traditional community of our hinterland.

PEASANT TRADITIONS

The environments chosen for their typology and specificity help to highlight the differences historically existing in the various sectors of the local community context, characterised by a marked social stratification, removing the stereotyped image of a flat and homologated “peasant world“.
Thus, in the residential context, the domestic spaces of a sharecropper-colonial family are compared with those of a family of medium-sized owners/artisans and those of a landowner family; while in the productive context, the spaces and organisation of a small farm winery are compared with those of a large landowner winery.
The craftsman’s “workshop” represents a characteristic and important element of community life; in our case the carpenter’s/coopers’ workshop was mainly at the service of the agricultural activity of wine production.
Thus, the wheelwright’s workshop represents the evidence of a transport activity historically rooted in the ‘Velvese’ community, which is reflected in many traces of a service economy related to the passage through the village of the important trade route that connected the Riviera with the Po Valley.
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