The Muggio Valley was once very nearly abandoned, but precisely because the locals place importance on their past, it now lives on into the future as an open-air museum.

Drop down the Monte Generoso to the less well-known Muggio valley and travel back in time. As if time has stood still for the past 200 years, the villages cling like swallows' nests on to the rocks. Follow fascinating paths past renovated buildings, witnesses to a traditional way of life. It is this charming, unspoilt character that the local ethnographic museum is working to preserve – by converting the valley into an open-air museum. As you walk through this delightful landscape, you come across relics of past centuries undergoing careful restoration, from fences of stone slabs to watermills and charcoal burners’ sites. The “nevère” are particularly intriguing: stone structures extending deep underground, which locals filled in winter with compacted snow – providing cold storage all summer for fresh milk. Owing to its intact, diverse and unique landscape, the valley was in fact awarded the "Landscape of the Year" title in the year 2014.