Museo regionale della fauna alpina Beck-Peccoz (Alpenfaunamuseum)

Inside a small 1904 palazzina at Predeloasch, the regional museum of alpine fauna Beck-Peccoz preserves what a Walser baronial family assembled over more than a century: around two thousand hunting trophies, a period armoury of some ninety weapons, and family art — a collection with genuine scientific as well as historical weight.

Why it matters

This is not a generic natural-history museum; it is the regional museum of alpine fauna for Valle d'Aosta, and it lives inside the very collection that a single family built to house it. Baron Luigi Beck-Peccoz, head of a noble Walser family of Gressoney, directed in his will — drawn up in Augsburg on 11 February 1882 — that his hunting trophies be transferred to Gressoney and kept in a purpose-built building funded by a dedicated capital sum. His sons and executors Antonio and Carlo had the palazzina erected in the early twentieth century; the building dates to 1904, and the Regione Valle d'Aosta bought it and the collections in 1986, giving the institution its present regional standing. The result is unusual: the museum's scientific interest in alpine wildlife is inseparable from the social history of a Walser family that traded across Europe, supplied Napoleonic armies and received noble recognition from two kingdoms.

What to notice

The collection includes roughly two thousand mounted trophies, among them specimens of Siberian roe deer (Capreolus pygargus) and a goat–ibex hybrid. Its armoury preserves about ninety weapons in their original display cases, including combination guns, muzzle- and breech-loading hunting guns, Damascus barrels and carved walnut stocks used by the family from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth century. German-style frescoes give the rooms a Central European character, reflecting the family's ties to Augsburg.

Context and history

The collection began with Johann Christoph Beck (1749–1818), who accumulated objects during his travels and commercial activity, including supplying the Napoleonic armies; his son Joseph Anton (1808–1882) completed it. The family's rise is written into its heraldry: King Louis I of Bavaria permitted a deer in the family crest, and King Carlo Alberto of Sardinia, when recognising the title, replaced it with an ibex — the animal that still anchors the collection's identity. Baron Luigi Beck-Peccoz's 1882 will converted a private passion into a foundation, and the building erected by his sons and executors — Luigi, Antonio and Carlo — opened in 1904 at Predeloasch, near Villa Margherita. The ground floor, originally residential, was restored for exhibition use; displays were arranged by Egon Beck-Peccoz, Antonio's son. Regional acquisition in 1986 secured the collection's future and attached to it the museum's educational role for the fauna of the Monte Rosa valleys.