Ecomuseo della Pastorizia

The Eco-museum of Shepherding was officially established in 2000 in Pontebernardo, an alpine village at an altitude of 1,400 metres, in the municipality of Pietraporzio (CN), but the actual origin of this cultural, economic and social reality goes back many years, when the Stura Valley Mountain Community embarked on a path of both cultural revival and economic revitalisation of the activity of shepherding and the socio-anthropological context connected to it. The Eco-museum began, on the one hand, with the recovery of the Sambucana sheep breed, indigenous to the valley, which was in danger of disappearing in the 1980s, and, on the other hand, with the rediscovery of the cultural heritage inherent in the pastoral world of the valley and its offshoots in the French Crau, which for decades hosted, during the winter period, many mountain people who, to supplement their family income, kept Merinos sheep in Provence. The museum route Na Draio per vioure - "a path to live" in the Languedoc language - is a journey through the centuries, discovering pastoralism in the Mediterranean, from its origins to the present day. The narrative, punctuated by the sounds and voices of the pastoral world, unfolds through objects, archive documents, photographs and films. The term draio indicates a path hidden among the rocks, which sheep easily spot and which they follow to graze the best grasses. But it also symbolically indicates the path that visitors can follow to discover how sheep farming in the Stura Valley is still today a living reality, an economic resource, the basis of the knowledge heritage linked to it.

The inn The Black Sheep is the Ecomuseum's tasting point, a food and wine presidium where you can sample the typical products of the Stura Valley area, in particular the Sambucano lamb meat, a Slow Food presidium, and the ecomuseum's cheeses and cured meats. The small restaurant is managed by 'Germinale' Cooperativa Agricola di Comunità, which cultivates land in the middle and lower Stura Valley. The inn is open every day for lunch and dinner, closed on Wednesdays. For info and reservations Giulia cell 338 106 8347