Seductions and Disenchantments in the Making of an Ecomuseum

In this chapter, I offer a critical analysis of a two-year project I was involved in to develop ecomuseums in Lombardy, Italy. Within the framework of the European Landscape Convention and the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, ecomuseums were interpreted and supported as tools for local development, sustainable citizenship and residents’ participation. Heritage in its wider sense here included a densely anthropic landscape. In fact, according to the founding fathers of this French museological tradition, the lived-in environment constitutes the basis of ecomuseum development whose local ‘patrimoine’ should be put to the service of its ‘communauté’ (de Varine 2005; Rivière 1989; de Barry, Desvallées and Wasserman 1992).