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Opening of the Museum of Pink Marble and Granite and the Marble Quarries Visitor Centre
Candoglia pink marble is, without a doubt, one of the finest and most famous types of stone, so much so that its use has been documented since the Augustan age, when the first quarries were opened in the mountains of the Val Grande for its extraction.
However, this prized material finds its most complete and spectacular expression in the construction of Milan Cathedral, built entirely from marble sourced from the vein running between Candoglia and Ornavasso, in particular from the Cava Madre, granted for the exclusive use of the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo as far back as 1387 by the then Lord of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti.
Even today, more than six centuries later, these mountains continue to yield this precious stone and to write a story that deserves to be told. And telling this story is precisely one of the purposes of the new facilities built with funding from the Interreg I-CH project ‘MuLM – the World’s Longest Museum’.
In particular, the new MUSEUM OF PINK MARBLE AND GRANITE in ALBO DI MERGOZZO, which will be INAUGURATED ON SATURDAY 21 OCTOBER 2023, at 9.30 am, is housed in a building owned by the Municipality of Mergozzo which served as the hamlet’s nursery school from 1929 to 1984.
The exhibition will be open to visitors on 21 October, in the morning until 12.00, with staff from the Granite Ecomuseum and the Mergozzo Archaeological Group in attendance, and in the afternoon with staff from the Val Grande National Park, from 2.30 pm to 5.00 pm.
The restoration of the building and its fitting out, designed by the Val Grande National Park, with significant contributions of materials and documents collected by the Mergozzo Archaeological Group and the loan of marble artefacts from the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano, aims to preserve and promote knowledge of these precious materials, their craftsmanship and the journey – the very theme precisely, of the exhibition rooms – that these stones have undertaken and continue to undertake towards Milan and other destinations around the world.
The former nursery school building, renovated and fitted out thanks to funds granted to the Park by the Interreg Programme, supplemented by significant resources from the Municipality of Mergozzo, will, in the ground-floor galleries, offer visitors the chance to trace the journey of marble and granite, both in a physical sense – from the famous Cava Madre in Candoglia along the waterway leading to Milan – and in a ‘transformative’ sense, through the various processing techniques that have made Candoglia’s pink marble so highly prized.
Finally, a section will be dedicated to the artistic uses of marble and granite, featuring works donated to the Municipality of Mergozzo by the Danish artist Eva Sørensen, and a small, precious sculpture in pink marble on loan for this exhibition from the family of Giovanni Battista Tedeschi.
