Museo delle Grigne

About this place

In the summer of 2016, a mountain village of fewer than 800 people took in more than a thousand visitors from sixty countries, when Wikimania — the annual gathering of Wikipedia's editors — chose for the first time to meet in a village rather than a city, in Esino Lario, perched at 910 metres above the eastern shore of Lake Como. The village went back to its quiet afterwards, and its small museum stayed on as proof that this is more than a dot on a hillside. The Museo delle Grigne was begun by the village priest, Giovanni Battista Rocca, in the 1930s, formally founded in 1959, and was the first local museum in what was then the province of Como. Volunteers of the Amici del Museo delle Grigne association run it to this day. The Grigne massif is limestone, hollowed out from within by caves, and that fact shapes the museum. The natural-history rooms show the Triassic fossils and minerals prised out of the Esino limestone, models of the cave systems threading beneath the peaks, dioramas of mountain animals and birds, and a case of Italian butterflies. Then the displays turn to people: Celtic and Roman finds, the story of iron and charcoal in the valley, hemp growing and weaving, the management of the woods, the carpet-weaving school the village once ran, and the moment in the nineteenth century when mountain footpaths turned into roads and then into tourism. The present home opened in April 2016, a new building in the park of Villa Clotilde, and it is laid out with a great deal more care than the phrase 'village museum' usually promises. And here is the condition that decides everything: the museum is entirely seasonal. It opens on Saturdays and Sundays from late June, 10:00 to 18:00, and adds Friday afternoons, 14:00 to 18:00, through July and August. From September onwards the door stays shut unless you arrange a visit by phone in advance. Entry is free, and a donation to the volunteers who keep it open is left to your judgement. Do not climb the mountain without confirming the day's opening first; anyone who makes the whole journey and finds a locked door will not find much in a village this size to make up for it. Getting here from Como is not a stroll. Option one is the ferry from Como to Varenna — roughly two and a quarter hours on the slow boat, about an hour on the fast service, which carries a supplement and sails only a few times a day — then bus line D121, Bellano to Varenna to Esino Lario, up from the station forecourt at Varenna, a short walk from the ferry pier, and a winding 35 to 40 minutes to the village. Option two is driving via Lecco and the SS36, then the twelve kilometres of climbing that begin at the lakeshore turn below Perledo, about an hour and a half from Como. Either way, budget a full day. The village itself is small: a handful of restaurants that may close outside the season, no halal food and no prayer room, so bring what you need. The museum is easy going for children and short on walking, but the road up is all hairpins, and anyone prone to car sickness knows what that means.