Roman festival at Pettinesca

THe Roman site of Studen-Petinesca covers a large part of a forest, therefore the animation where distributed across those woods. Our Museum booth with a large collection of Roman footwear was placed on the main path, surrounded by nature. The event was organised by the association Pro Petinesca and the Archeological Service of the Canton Bern and was a big public sucess, proving once more that people show an iterest in past culture. Wh wher part of the society for cultural and archeological animations AnimArc.

At the castle in Zug

Medieval festival in and arount the Zug castle on Juily 10th 2012:

It was a succes with over 2’000 visitors. All in an ambience of the 15th century, in honor of the museum in that castle

Night of Science in Innsbruck

Our mobile collection left on a trip to Austria. The aim of our expedition is participating in the “Night of Science” at the University of Innsbruck. We also seized the opportunity to surprise other institutions, including a center for the visually impaired and a school.

Experiment A

The Association Experiment A works in the field of experimental archaeology. Their task is to find answers to questions or theories posed by archaeologists by using resources of experimental archaeology on a scientific basis. Public access is made possible through their participation in historical events and workshops. A project concerned with medieval times led them to recreate their own costumes based on the Codex Manesse.

Pilgrim shoemakers from Holland

Our museum is just next to the Way of St.-James leading through Lausanne. Occasionally some pilgrims on their way to Santiago di Compostella in Galicia, Spain, also find their way to our museum. Needless to say that shoes where and still are the main means of locomotion for the pilgrims. Today we had the visit of two special pilgrims from the Netherlands, both also well initiated in the art of medieval shoe making. Occasionally you can encounter them at the archaeological park ARCHEON in Alphen a/d Rijn. For us it was a surprise visit of fellow shoemakers, for them a special discovery. We sat for hours and talked about medieval shoes and medieval shoe making.

Surprise visit

With a museum measuring barely 12 square meters (129 sq.ft) it becomes hard to deal with busloads of visitors. Occasionally it does happen that a travel organizer finds a reference to our museum and intends to send us a busload of people. Usually they check with us first for details to find out that this will not be possible, but this time they did not.

So what to do if you get a phone call asking if the museum is open within the next hour, you agree and an hour later you have 30 to 40 people showing up? We mastered the problem by putting out collection on a wall in front of our museum and improvised a guided tour of our collection out in the street. What looked at first as a confusion turned very quickly into a happy experience for all. Our luck was, that the weather was in our favor.

Roman festivities in Vicques

The first Roman festival in Vicques for the inauguration of the information pavilion concerning the Roman villa that stood there 2,000 years ago.

The pavillion is a mini museum with big windows showing and models and copies of the object found on this site. No need to observe visiting hours, the collection can be seen day and night all year through. The event was planned to be festive, but most of all informative and educational. The local group of Volonteers (Groupement pour la revalorisation de la villa romaine de Vicques) did a spledid job indeed.