AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Tucked in the old hamlet of Frazione Corti in Campodolcino, the Mu.Vi.S. – Museum of the Via Spluga and Val San Giacomo is the storytelling heart of a valley that spent centuries as one of the great crossroads of the Alps. Housed in a 16th-century building long known as the Palàzz, the museum weaves together nature, archaeology, traditional mountain architecture and the human drama of migration and trade, all bound by the road that made this valley famous: the Via Spluga.↗
Rather than a dry collection of relics, the MUVIS reads as a journey back in time. It recounts the hard, subsistence lives of farmers, herders, craftsmen, women and children who clung to the slopes above the valley, alongside the stories of emigrants, muleteers and the illustrious travellers—poets, philosophers, composers and scientists—who crossed the Spluga Pass on their way between the Mediterranean and northern Europe.↗↗
A road through European history
The museum's guiding thread is the Via Spluga, the most direct historic link between the Lombard plain and the countries of northern Europe. Inside, exhibits trace the caravans of mules and horses driven by local muleteers along daring, winding paths, some hanging over terrifying gorges that alarmed the travellers of the day—among them the notorious Cardinello stretch and the Via Mala.
