Parco Naturale Regionale delle Alpi Liguri

Piazza della Chiesa

18023 Montegrosso Pian Latte (IM)

Municipality: Montegrosso Pian Latte

Region: Liguria

The Chestnut Museum proposes a short itinerary divided into 6 sections, which through describing panels, pictures, maps and reconstructions explains the history and the traditions connected with the use of chestnut in the rural societies of the Ligurian hinterland. From the botanical aspects, to the historical and ethnographic ones, from the different ways to use this plant, to the chestnut processing and conservation techniques: the museum shows the entire chestnut cycle in the economy and in the diet of the past generations. At the end of the itinerary you will admire the real section of a thousand-year old log and a didactic video.
Outside the museum, in a niche which was built on purpose, it is possible to admire a "machinery to beat chestnuts" (built in the 1940s), first example of the industrialization of a manual work.
From here the itinerary entitled "Bosco Addomesticato" (Tame Forest) starts, and it crosses the village leading to a recently renovated dryer first, and then to a clearing in the forest equipped with the reconstruction of two charcoal kilns (one intact and one sectioned) and a chestnut tree forest.

The dryer ("canissu" in dialect) is a widely spread structure in the Arroscia Valley dating back to the 18th century and used until the first half of the last century especially near the villages rich in chestnut tree forests.
The building had a fixed structure: a place built with stones equipped with a central fireplace and a pierced ceiling realized with load-bearing girders and superimposed plaited canes (which the name comes from). The grating was situated at about two meters above the fire, and through some holes in the side walls of the structure the chestnuts carried by oxen or mules were unloaded. From the outside  a particular tool (a kind of hoe) was inserted into the holes to mix the chestnuts at least once a day while being dehydrated. The fire was kept burning for 20 days or until the right drying level was achieved.

The third site shows the reconstruction of the ancient charcoal kilns: a pile of green wood, empty in the middle of it to light the fire, sealed with a rock plate and covered with wet soil, leaves, grass and musk. Nearby the hut used by the charcoal-burners as a shelter can be visited.