Museo Archivio dei Malaspina
Located in the palace of the Malaspina Marquises of Mulazzo, the Museum is devoted to the history of the great family that governed most of Lunigiana for more than a thousand years, and constitutes an important international reference point for scholars researching the navigator Alessandro Malaspina through objects, nautical instruments and charts, documents, manuscripts and books.
It is the repository of the “A. Malaspina” Centre’s specialised library (focusing on the historical figure’s travels and explorations, as well as local and South-American history) and historic archive (which includes the family archive of the Mulazzo Malaspina family, head of the imperial feud for the Spino Secco branch, and part of the archive once belonging to Cremona-born Fabio Ala Ponzone, a partner in travels to Alessandro Malaspina).
The Museum promotes educational activities in local schools that focus both on the history of the Malaspina family – employing the digitised version of domestic documents that can be consulted within the multimedia room and on the Archiweb website (a web-service pertaining to Municipal Historic Archives that is particularly significant in the Massa-Carrara province), and to the history of navigation and the relationship between the Old and New World as researched from an ethnological, demographic, cartographic, anthropological and philosophical perspective, setting off from the discovery of America – recounting Europe’s great exploration campaigns – up to the 18th century, when Alessandro Malaspina conducted the last of his scientific and politically-driven explorations.
