The museum offering of Sappada aims to give visibility to its historical-linguistic and environmental identity: the museums, connected to each other, cover different and complementary aspects of the local reality.

The Piccolo Museo della Grande Guerra

The Piccolo Museo della Grande Guerra was established in 2002 on the initiative of collectors Emanuele Pachner and Francesco Pomarè, with the intention of honoring the territory where the Piave, a river sacred to the Homeland, originates, and the men who faced each other in these places during the First World War.

In an exhibition space created from an old forge and former municipal slaughterhouse near the Cascatelle del Mühlbach, there is a rich and significant collection of artifacts and memorabilia belonging to the two opposing sides during the First World War.

On the Comelico and Sappada front, there were no battles that changed the course of the war, but an immense effort was made to occupy and maintain positions at high altitude even during the harsh winters, from the outbreak of hostilities in the spring of 1915 until the defeat at Caporetto and the consequent retreat of the front in the autumn of 1917.

The territory still bears numerous traces of these events, and the purpose of the museum is to provide an interpretation and remember, with personal objects and equipment, the life of soldiers on the Dolomite front, where the harshness of nature already made simple survival extremely difficult. The progressive enrichment of the collections has given the ensemble a remarkable assortment: among the materials on display are uniforms and clothing, tools for trench life at high altitude, field stoves supplied to the Italian and Austrian armies, documents, and photographs of local interest.

Photo: © Piller Hoffer Manuel