Narrator: Elena Ronca – environmental hiking guide

A place like the Museo del brigantaggio, or any ethnographic museum, shouldn’t limit itself to interpreting their collections but should offer interpretations on the landscape where the museum is located too. And what is a landscape if not a space, both imaginary and tangible, shaped by the stories of the people who have lived in it, passed through it and told its tales?

The Parco del Timone is located south of the town of Cellere and hosts a wide variety of flora and fauna. The park gets its name from the Timone stream, tributary of the Fiora river, that runs through its territory. It’s a place with a strong biodiversity and has characteristics that belong to several different natural environments. The Sentiero brigando walks alongside the Timone stream for a long stretch. The presence of “water lentils” is a testimony to the characteristic clearness of its waters. Many of the plant species that spontaneously grow in the territory and enrich the path with a variety of colours were used as food or as medicine, bearing witness to a tradition that has been lost in the collective memory of the woods and its extracts. The park’s territory, now completely inhabited and used solely a destination for hiking and trekking enthusiasts, used to be especially anthropized. It was a place for animals to pasture, for people to pass through and the location of several manufacturing activities. The abandonment of the area, mostly due to changes in economic and social needs, caused it to grow wild over time, a trait similar to many landscapes and woods of the territory.