SOMIEDO Natural Park
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Somiedo Ecomuseum | ||||||||||||
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The Somiedo Ecomuseum aims to further the understanding of every ethnographic element (from a basket to a “braña”) belonging and sustaining a rural culture now on the brink of extinction, though still present in the villages and the landscapes of Somiedo. The museum, created in 1996 by the County Council of Somiedo, is meant to recover the various handicrafts and traditional activities of the county, including the different types of dwelling with their evolution in time, all of it related to a farming sustenance economy. The museum wants to recover a way of life that knew how to make good use of an often hostile environment, preserving all its natural resources and shaping a unique landscape in which the human marks are as spectacular as the natural ones: “brañas” (high altitude summer hamlets with traditional thatched huts), mills, tracks and paths, things that want to be shown to the public through the ethnographic routes. The museum has two seats: “Los Oficios” in Pola de Somiedo, and “La casa” in Veigas. | ||||||||||||
"Los Oficios" Pola de
Somiedo  |
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This seat, in Pola de Somiedo, exhibits tools and utensils of different traditional trades, all donated by the locals to the museum. | ||||||||||||
 Spinners |
 Blacksmiths |
 Basket artisans |
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"La Casa" Veigas | ||||||||||||
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The other seat of the Ecomuseum is to be found in Veigas. It exhibits three dwellings with their traditional furniture and layout. Here we can appreciate the different degrees of evolution in time of the typical Somiedo house. The three dwellings still keep the “teitos de escoba” (thatch roofs). This type of roof was once very common in Somiedo for every type of buildings: houses, schools, mills, etc; but it was gradually substituted by materials common to other areas, like tiles and slates. The traditional thatch roofs remain today mostly just in the “brañas”, scattered all over the county. | |||||||||||
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More information
about The Network of Ethnographic Museums of Asturias:
www.redmeda.com | ||||||||||||