An opportunity to raise awareness of monuments, buildings, and numerous points of interest in Giornico, allowing visitors to the village an easy reading of the local cultural heritage with the possibility of accessing in-depth information and directions on the difficulties of the itinerary through QR codes. The route consists of 15 stations with totems designed to make the information and content accessible to a disabled audience as well.

It was created by the Museum of Leventina in collaboration with the Design Institute of SUPSI-Department of Environment Construction and Design as part of the PATI-Patrimony Accessible Territory Inclusive project.

Wanted by the Municipality of Giornico on the impetus of an initiative of the City Council, the path is inaugurated on Saturday, May 18, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. in the presence of Rosolino Bellotti, Mayor of Giornico, Diana Tenconi, Director of the Leventina Museum, and Marta Pucciarelli, researcher and coordinator of the PATI project promoted within the SUPSI Design Institute.

The project was conducted through a participatory and inclusive process that involved the museum guides, several consultants with disabilities from UNITAS and Gruppo Asperger Ticino, and communication experts to assess the accessibility of the Giornico itinerary, take care of the co-design of the signage and the revision of descriptive content suitable for an audience with visual impairments. In addition, an accessibility plan was developed for the museum, identifying needs and critical points to improve the experience of those facing the route. The plan serves as a guide to improve the accessibility of the Leventina Museum's new offerings.

Giornico and its heritage

Giornico's historical importance is attested by its remarkable built heritage consisting of churches, bridges, monuments and buildings covering a time period roughly from the 11th century to the second half of the 20th century. The strategic location of the village, at the foot of the Biaschina and at the beginning of the alluvial plain of the Ticino valley, was certainly one of the elements that, linked to the activities related to transit along the St. Gotthard road, made the village an important political and religious center of the lower Leventina.
The 15 points of the route include some of the most valuable monuments in the canton, such as the Romanesque church of San Nicola from the second decade of the 1100s or the church of San Pellegrino, which houses a cycle of late 16th-century frescoes including the Last Judgement by artists Giovan Battista Tarilli and Domenico Caresana dated 1589. The journey into the Middle Ages passes from the two cores on the left bank of the river to the remains of the mills built on the island accessible by two arched stone bridges. The remains of the ancient mills point back to craft activities that were still present in the 19th century.
On the right bank, on the other hand, it is possible to visit the remains of the ancient arsenal and three of Giornico's seven churches. Rodai's via dei grotti offers a dive into the village's winemaking activity with characteristic pergolas and a succession of small buildings designed for food preservation.
19th-century points of interest include Apollonio Pessina's monument (1937) dedicated to the 1478 Battle of the Big Stones to the La Congiunta building by renowned architect Peter Märkli, built in 1953 to house the works of artist Hans Josephsohn.

Participatory design and a pathway that aims for accessibility and inclusion

The signage project of the Municipality of Giornico is part of a broader process of transforming the Leventina Museum into an inclusive reality, launched in October 2021 with the support of the SUPSI Design Institute as part of the PATI project. The goal is to improve the accessibility of the museum's cultural heritage for people with sensory disabilities through a series of initiatives, some of which have already been developed in past years.

The creation of signage for the Giornico itinerary was initiated after a site survey and workshop to assess points of interest that brought together people with visual impairments and autism with communication experts and museum guides (October 2021). This led to the creation of a detailed accessibility plan aimed at making the museum more accessible to all and sundry. In June 2022, a two-day inclusive workshop, titled "Let's Design Together an Inclusive Culture Menu," organized by SUPSI's Design Institute, provided a precise definition of goals, accessible criteria, and design ideas, involving people with various disabilities, designers, and museum contacts. The textual content of the signage was revised by UNITAS to ensure effective and meaningful description of points of interest, while the images were adapted to meet the needs of visually impaired people. In addition, the signage provides access to in-depth information on the website via QR codes, encouraging visitors to explore the points of interest with sensory experiences.

Next Steps.

Looking ahead, the implementation of new audio content is planned. In parallel, the museum has been promoting other initiatives in the area of accessibility, such as the co-design of the "Wires of Inclusion" pathway with the Inclusive Elementary School of Sant'Antonino and the Department of Formation and Learning/High School of Pedagogy of SUPSI, the training of guides for accessible guided tours and the documentation and mapping of points of interest on free platforms (OpenStreetMap, Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia), thus expanding, the digital accessibility of the museum and allowing full usability and reuse of materials by all and sundry.

Photo: Humpback bridge, view from Giornico Island, 2023
(PATI Heritage Accessible Inclusive Territory, SUPSI, 2023. Photo by Massimo Bordogna and Saliù Baldé, SUPSI, CC BY-SA)