From the wartime city to the Papa Lodge

Period

02.10.2022 / 01.05.2023

Description

Porte del Pasubio is a gap, a pass. During the Great War it was right behind the frontlines and a small town was built there: a jumble of shacks built one on top of the other on the rocks. The many photos found, largely unreleased, were taken by those who lived there. They express a sense of belonging, as hard as it is to believe in times of war. This is the sentiment explored by the exhibition, the energy needed to take ownership of what was originally just a rugged, inhospitable and abandoned corner of a mountain and transform it into a real place.

Once the war was over, CAI (Club Alpino Italiano – Italian Alpine Club) built its lodge here, right over a soldier’s house. It was a strongly symbolic choice by which Mount Pasubio was adopted by the city and the towns in the valleys. The lodge, inaugurated in 1922, was called Pasubio Lodge. Expanded again and again in the following years, it’s now called Papa Lodge.

It’s a long story which is also told in the exhibition, which aims at discovering the mountain. Because, before the war, hardly anyone went up there. On the one hand, for three years, roads and mule tracks had been built: a network that made access possible.

On the other, it had entered the lives of millions of soldiers and in everyone’s consciousness.

So Porte del Pasubio found itself, with its lodge, as a reference point: a destination, a meeting place and a starting point, all at the same time. It is, essentially, a crossroads of stories.

The exhibition catalogue ‘’Porte del Pasubio 1916-2022. Dalla città della guerra al Rifugio Papa’’, which includes an English translation, is available in bookshops.

Images

Crediti: © Claudio Rigon © Club Alpino Italiano