Centro visitatori del Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso – L'uomo e i coltivi (Campiglia Soana)

At Campiglia in the Soana valley, Man and Cultivation is Gran Paradiso's agriculture centre, presenting crops, techniques and terraced landscapes alongside living plants.

Why it matters

The park's founding narrative concerns animals saved from extinction, but its landscapes were made by farmers. Since the mid-twentieth century, agricultural abandonment has contributed to hydrogeological instability as terraces and drained slopes fail, the disappearance of rural landscapes, reduced biodiversity as meadows revert to scrub, and the loss of traditional techniques accumulated over centuries. The exhibition presents the protected area through that human-environment relationship: biodiversity here is not only a gift of wilderness but an inheritance of cultivation. The centre presents cultivated meadows and potato fields as part of the protected area's ecological and cultural heritage.

What to notice

Inside, a single long wall runs the length of the building, carrying the exhibition's chronological spine. Fixed panels alternate with concealed ones that open like sliding shutters, niches and shelves — a design that lets displays unfold as you move, revealing crops, tools and techniques in sequence from traditional practice to contemporary method. The interpretation covers traditional agricultural production and its modern successors, and the changing relationship between cultivators and their environment. Outside, roughly 2,500 square metres present a living botanical collection, with plant species accompanied by interpretive panels. The building was constructed with attention to renewable energy production and low-impact materials.

Context and history

Campiglia is the principal hamlet of the commune of Valprato Soana, up the Soana valley which branches south from the Orco near Pont Canavese. The centre is the park's agriculture museum within a network that interprets wildlife, geology, trades and religious culture in the neighbouring Orco valley. The centre's outdoor botanical collection sits within the Soana valley's pastoral and agricultural landscape.