Museo della Resistenza “Brigata Lys”

The Museo Della Resistenza “Brigata Lys” (Lys Brigade Resistance Museum) in Perloz is a museum and documentation center on Italian resistance to German and fascist occupation in the Valle d’Aosta, from 1943 to 1945. The museum presents the history and activities of the Third Lys Brigade: a network of partisans formed in the village of Perloz following announcement of the Italian-Allied armistice and subsequent German occupation of northern Italy in September 1943. Composed of over two hundred individuals organized into smaller detachments, the Lys Brigade conducted partisan attacks, theft, and sabotage directed at German and Italian Social Republic troops; the museum presents these activities, as well as subsequent reprisals on local populations – looting, arrests, deportations, executions, and the destruction of villages – carried out by German and Italian troops. This history is presented within the broader context of Italian experiences in the Second World War and Italian partisan movements.

The Lys Brigade Resistance Museum is located in Perloz, within a building purchased in 1953 by veterans of the partisan unit; in 1995, the building was donated to the municipality for the goal of creating a museum and documentation center. The museum was opened to the public in 2008. The permanent exhibition presents the daily lives of partisans and includes documents, photographs, maps, weapons, tools, clothing and badges as well as facsimiles of partisans’ living environments including an alpine hut and village cellar. A documentation center is dedicated to local village schools, and contains documentation on the Lys Brigade. The museum forms a part of INTEREG Europe’s Mémoire des Alpes – Chemins de la Liberté (Memory of the Alps – Trails of Freedom) initiative, which connects significant places of memory in the region across the French, Swiss, and Italian borders.