A Museum in the Woods

From the Lusérn Museum to the Path of the Imaginary, on the trail of Cimbrian culture

In Luserna, the roar of thunder does not only warn of storm, it also announces a birth. Because here, in the heart of the woods, it is Frau Pèrtega who brings the children. She keeps them all in her cave, inside small barrels. When a barrel becomes free, the old woman rinses it out and, in doing so, she may accidentally hit it against the rocks. So, while you hear the sound of thunder, a mother hugs a newborn.

It’s one of the legends you can discover at the Lusérn Museum, a museum that lives in the village but breathes in the forest.

Visiting it means embarking on a journey that begins in the rooms of a stone palace and then winds along a path through the trees, where larches and firs tell the story of the Cimbrians, the woodcutters who came to Trentino from southern Germany.

Lusérn Museum: what to see
Lusérn Museum: what to do
House Museum - Haus von Prükk
Path of the Imaginary
Werk Lusérn

Lusérn Museum: what to see

Lusérn Museum - Luserna

Your itinerary can only begin here, in the centre of Luserna, one of Italy’s Most Beautiful Villages. The museum gives you a comprehensive overview of the Cimbrian culture, its history, and its traditions.

It displays traditional clothing and objects, life-size dioramas of Alpine fauna, video documentaries, and a section dedicated to copper working in the Luserna area during the Bronze Age.

The most striking thing about the museum is the permanent exhibition “Alphabet of the Great War: 26 Letters to Never Forget”. Twenty-six coffins, each marked with a specific word, become display cases housing period objects commonly used by soldiers - rifles, postcards, crutches and medicines. There is no room for warmongering rhetoric; this is an honest and merciless account of the war.

History in a Sheet

Of all the objects you can see in the museum, the one that best tells the story of Luserna and its inhabitants is a large sheet once used to carry hay from the fields to the house, where it was then hoisted into the attic. An activity that was carried out at different times of the year, and involved the whole family.

A simple sheet can evoke the sacrifices of these people and the cyclical nature of seasons, which, up here in the mountains, are still four.

Lusérn Museum: what to do

Learn the Art of Bobbin Lace!

The Museum offers countless initiatives that make it a lively place. From temporary exhibitions on specific Cimbrian themes, like the exhibition on women, work, and the mountains, to the bobbin lacemaking class organised with the Cimbrian Institute, to learn how to create lace, as the women of the village once did.

For the little ones, there are initiatives for schools and educational workshops to learn about the forest and its inhabitants, or to discover the Cimbrian language, its translations, and its legends.

House Museum - Haus von Prükk

Casa Museo - Haus von Prükk

The second stop takes you outside the museum, through the village streets, until you reach Haus von Prükk, a house museum where you can immerse yourself in the life of a 19th-century Cimbrian peasant family.

Path of the Imaginary

The Path of the Imaginary

You can’t get to know a people of woodcutters without taking a walk in the woods. The third stop takes you along the Cimbrian Path of the Imaginary, an easy walk of about six and a half kilometres, which takes two hours to complete and leads you through the woods and pastures of Luserna, starting from the town centre.

Along the way, you’ll find several wooden sculptures created by local artists, inspired by legends and characters of the Cimbrian folklore, including that of Frau Pèrtega, which we mentioned at the beginning of our journey. This and other stories are to be discovered one step at a time.

Werk Lusérn

The last stop along the Cimbrian culture includes a short detour from the The Path of the Imaginary, to reach the foot of Forte Campo – Werk Lusérn, one of the protagonists of the Great War.

It was one of the seven imposing fortresses that the Austrians built between 1907 and 1912 on the Folgaria, Lavarone and Luserna plateaus to defend themselves against the Italian breakthrough attempts in the event of conflict. Due to its imposing size, it was nicknamed “Padreterno” (Italian for “Eternal Father”) by Italian soldiers and witnessed the clashes in this border area and the flight of the inhabitants of Luserna, forced to hastily leave their homes under bombardment.

Another story of the Cimbrian people, whose tale begins in the museum and then winds its way through larch and fir forests.