Hexhibition halls

EXHIBITION HALLS

INAUGURATION

The museum was inaugurated in Bova in 2016 in the presence of Eckart Rohlfs, son of the linguist Gerhard Rohlfs, a German scholar who has dedicated himself so much to the study and promotion of the ancient language and the Greeks of Calabria. The creation of the Museum was made possible thanks to the synergy between the Municipality of Bova, the Region of Calabria, the Aspromonte National Park Authority and the GAL Area Grecanica, all of which helped the Municipality of Bova in various ways to create a place dedicated to the promotion and protection of the cultural heritage of the historical and linguistic minority of the Greeks of Calabria. The Municipality of Bova has also played an active role, over the years donating ancient objects from rural life to the Municipality of Bova, thus enabling the exhibition of artefacts and equipment representative of the Greek-Calabrian community, which have also made the museum interesting from an ethnographic point of view and have helped to explain in an innovative way a complex subject such as the Lingua de Greci di Calabria.

DEDICATION

The decision to dedicate the Civic Museum to the German glottologist Gerhard Rohlfs (Berlin, 14 July 1892 - Tübingen, 12 September 1986) is due to the important work on the Greco-Germanic language carried out by this scholar since the 1920s. In fact, Rohlfs succeeded in proving its Magna-Greek origin, rejecting the hypothesis of those who believed that it was a language that had spread to Calabria after the Byzantine conquest of southern Italy.

POSITION

The museum is located at the entrance to the ancient village of Bova, in a particularly symbolic place, since it represents the exact spot where, in the mid-19th century, the English traveller and illustrator Edward Lear drew a beautiful view of Bova, which is now on display in the museum itself. Edward Lear left in Calabria Greca the stories and drawings of this 40-day journey on foot, from 25 July to 5 September 1847, with his friend Proby and a mule. This experience of the Grand Tour gave rise to the book "Diario di un viaggio a piedi" (Diary of a Journey on Foot), published by Laruffa and Rubbettino, and "Il sentiero dell'inglese" (The Englishman's Path), an evocative 7-day walk in a land of yesteryear, among enchanting Greek villages, majestic centuries-old olive groves, fascinating torrents and unique landscapes of the Aspromonte National Park, conceived and coordinated by Naturaliter and Compagnia dei Cammini.

PECULIARITY

A visit to the museum is an opportunity to discover the peculiarities of the Calabrian-Greek language and its millenary history. This ancient language is still spoken today on the slopes of southern Aspromonte, in the Calabrian municipalities of Bova, Bova Marina, Condofuri and Roghudi Nuovo. The Greeks of Calabria are recognised as a linguistic minority by national law no. 482/1999 and regional law no. 15/2003.

THE HALLS

In the six rooms of the museum, each one dedicated to a great scholar who was interested in the immaterial heritage of the Greeks of Calabria, it is possible to discover various aspects of the Greco language, explained through photographs, historical documents and audio-visual installations that allow the visitor to hear and understand this ancestral language that dates back to the time of Homer. In addition to the archaeological and ethnographic exhibits, there is also a collection of rural life objects that belonged to Gerhard Rohlfs himself and were donated to the museum by his son, Eckart.

LINGUA GRECO CALABRA

La visita al museo consente di ripercorrere le vicissitudini del linguista tedesco, a seguito dell’esposizione delle sue tesi sulle origini magnogreche della lingua greco-calabra, ipotesi che tanto urtarono la sensibilità dei linguisti italiani dell’epoca, poiché scardinavano la visione nazionalista del regime fascista, evidenziando come l’antica Roma non fosse stata capace di latinizzare l’intera penisola italiana.