It is a country brimming with artistic treasures, but Italy now has a surprising new addition to its rich tapestry of cultural heritage – the world's first museum dedicated to faeces.
While Florence boasts the Uffizi Galleries and Rome has the Capitoline
Museums, a tiny village in northern Italy hopes to be put on the tourist
map with the newly unveiled Museo Della Merda – the Museum of S---.
The museum, which opened this week inside a medieval castle in the
village of Castelbosco near the city of Piacenza, was created by
Gianantonio Locatelli, a local farmer.
He runs a herd of 2,500 cows that produces 30,000 litres of milk a day,
which is then turned into Grana Padano, a hard cheese similar to
Parmesan.
But they also produce around 100,000 kilograms of dung a day, a quantity that Mr Locatelli struggled to dispose of.
Working on the adage that where there's muck, there's brass, he built an elaborate waste treatment plant which converts the manure into methane, fertiliser and even raw materials for the production of bricks and plaster.
The recycling project was so successful that he decided to showcase it as a museum.
He has also collected excrement-related artefacts from around the world, putting them on display in the 14th century castle where he lives with this family.
They include a lump of fossilised dinosaur faeces, jars of faeces, art works inspired by human waste, ancient Roman medicinal cures that featured animal excrement, and a collection of dung beetles, which were held in high esteem by the ancient Egyptians. The dung beetle is also the symbol of the museum.
The castle and nearby village are now heated by electricity produced from the methane extracted from the cows' dung.
"Few phenomena are so rich in material and conceptual complexity as the cultural history of s---," the museum's prospectus said.
Luca Cipeletti, the architect who designed and built the recycling plant as well as the displays inside the castle, said: "The name of the museum may seem vulgar but it is a serious project.
"It is about science, art, the environment and sustainability. We are trying to demonstrate the value of a material which is normally considered to be useless."
The museum will be open at the weekends, but opening hours could be extended depending on its success.
But do its unusual contents mean that it stinks to high heaven?
"Absolutely not. Methane is what makes s--- smell, so if you remove it, as we do in order to produce energy, there's no odour at all," said Mr Cipeletti. "The place smells as fresh as a daisy."
But they also produce around 100,000 kilograms of dung a day, a quantity that Mr Locatelli struggled to dispose of.
Working on the adage that where there's muck, there's brass, he built an elaborate waste treatment plant which converts the manure into methane, fertiliser and even raw materials for the production of bricks and plaster.
The recycling project was so successful that he decided to showcase it as a museum.
He has also collected excrement-related artefacts from around the world, putting them on display in the 14th century castle where he lives with this family.
They include a lump of fossilised dinosaur faeces, jars of faeces, art works inspired by human waste, ancient Roman medicinal cures that featured animal excrement, and a collection of dung beetles, which were held in high esteem by the ancient Egyptians. The dung beetle is also the symbol of the museum.
The castle and nearby village are now heated by electricity produced from the methane extracted from the cows' dung.
"Few phenomena are so rich in material and conceptual complexity as the cultural history of s---," the museum's prospectus said.
Luca Cipeletti, the architect who designed and built the recycling plant as well as the displays inside the castle, said: "The name of the museum may seem vulgar but it is a serious project.
"It is about science, art, the environment and sustainability. We are trying to demonstrate the value of a material which is normally considered to be useless."
The museum will be open at the weekends, but opening hours could be extended depending on its success.
But do its unusual contents mean that it stinks to high heaven?
"Absolutely not. Methane is what makes s--- smell, so if you remove it, as we do in order to produce energy, there's no odour at all," said Mr Cipeletti. "The place smells as fresh as a daisy."
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου