Trentino Historical Museum Foundation: A Networked, Multimedia, Participative, Adaptive Model for Curating Cultural Heritage in Mountain Areas

The geographic conditions of mountain areas have shaped fascinating forms of tangible and intangible heritage, but also remarkable contextual problems, ranging from complicated infrastructural situations – resulting in low levels of employment, abandonment, aging population, as well as relevant difficulties in running local assets – to particularly complex cultural systems – characterized by a delicate balance between the communities’ distinctive identities, physically and culturally protected by natural borders, and the acknowledgement of a shared history. These special contexts solicit peculiar practices for the preservation, management and enhancement of cultural heritage, and are therefore a potentially fertile territory for the experimentation with innovative strategies and tools. The paper aims at offering an insight into the experience and the best practices designed and developed by the Fondazione Museo Storico del Trentino, in the tenth anniversary of this institution.