Parco Naturale Regionale delle Alpi Liguri

Via Madonnetta and sport camp

18025 Mendatica (IM)

Municipality: Mendatica

Region: Liguria

Mendatica, as many other villages situated in the Arroscia, Tanaro, Argentina and Nervia Valleys, developed a subsistence economy based on grazing: the lives of its inhabitants were characterized by a very simple economic level and hard work aimed at using as much as possible the resources of a very mean land.
In order to better use such resources, the small mountain villages used to establish a series of high altitude settlements functioning as a seasonal residence. So the alpine meadows were born, namely small villages where shepherds lived with their herds from spring to late autumn (when snow began to fall): here they could use still cultivable lands, since none remained in the villages, and meadows were ideal to graze animals.
Today these places still exist, but they have been abandoned and their structures are now deteriorating: nevertheless, the beauty of our mountains' landscapes, the features of their flora and fauna are still intact around them. Here we can still breathe the suspended atmosphere of the abandoned villages built stone by stone by the ancient inhabitants of Mendatica, therefore rich in history and traditions.
The historical-ethnographic museum aims at recalling the ancient life by proposing a rich collection of everyday objects but also historical documents regarding the territory's ancient geography.

The museum is situated in three different places:
Shepherd's House: In the Shepherd Museum there is a collection on the territory's popular traditions: objects and instruments used by the shepherds for the milk processing can be seen within the reproduced rooms of a typical house. Like the ancient buildings also the museum develops on two equally wide floors: the ground floor, reproducing a stall, is a room where shepherds' usual objects, both those for the cattle management and for the cheese production, are kept. To reach the upper floor there were only outdoor stairs, not to occupy too much space in such small houses. On the contrary stairs made of stone and wood were built in the museum in order to lead the visitors to the upper floor, where the main rooms where families lived their daily lives were built: on the one side the kitchen with the central fireplace, on the other side the bedroom with few belongings such as clothes and objects for one's personal hygiene.
The Old Prisons: Besides the Shpeherd's House, which reproduces the dwellings of the alpine meadows, where herds were led in summer, the Ethnographic Museum of Mendatica includes also a smaller exhibition area near the Old Prisons (in the Via Giovanni XXIII, by the parish church): two cells that in the 16th century hosted the prisoners who had to be judged by the court house of the near Pieve di Teco.
Today the ancient prison houses a rich selection of objects from the past daily life, that together with those exhibited in the Shepherd's House recall a real and effective image of this territory's ancient culture: from the pots to the shoes, and even to the lanterns and the inkwells, the Old Prisons remind visitors of the hard works and of the life of the past, when shepherds and farmers owned only what was strictly necessary to survive.
Historical Cartography Room: within the Historical Cartography Museum of Mendatica  (not far from the crossroads towards Cosio d'Arroscia near the sport field) there are many pictures of the maps of the territory dating back to the 16th/18th century, that were found in the State Archives of Turin, Genoa and Nice.
Since the end of the 16th century, following the purchase of the Principality of Oneglia by the House of Savoy, Mendatica (which remained part of the Republic of Genoa) was in direct contact with the territories of Piedmont: every territorial argument, even the smallest one, acquired an international significance and complicated the political scenery very much, especially because of the need to establish the borders and the territorial jurisdictions.
Also great architects and cartographers such as Francesco Gallo and Matteo Vinzoni worked in the Arroscia Valley to solve the problem of the borders.
The collection of Mendatica is divided into two rooms, one dedicated to the first period of the cartographic art, with small maps reproducing roads, settlements and religious places - most of them still existing - and an other room dedicated to the Napoleonic period with larger maps. There are also a folding map used with spying purposes and  an archive document with the key to decode encrypted messages.