In Saint-Véran, in Queyras, the highest commune of the High Alps and Europe, where roosters peck at the stars, there was a house dating from the 17th century, built in 1641 during the reign of Louis XIII, miraculously spared by the many fires that devastated the village over the centuries.
An association of friends who were natives of Saint-Véran and lovers of their village, a bit of a collector, dreamed of presenting to the public the treasures testifying to the past that they had accumulated in a museum.
In 1993 they bought this house, the oldest in Saint-Véran, with its exceptionally well-preserved traditional architecture, and created the Musée du Soum.
In this house transformed into a museum everything met the needs that the rigour of the environment has imposed on the mountain people for centuries. All the activities of daily life and working the land were concentrated there.
The Soum Museum
The Soum Museum offers the common room where the men and their cattle lived, the "fougagne" which was the room where the fire was made, very often the kitchen, the storeroom where the bread that was baked only twice a year was kept, the carpenter's workshop, the "establot" which was the sheep shed and many other things.
This house and the museum it houses have belonged to the Queyras Regional Natural Park (Hautes Alpes) since 2006.
If you were interested in visiting this museum and want to know more about the clothing traditions, you should go and see the House of Costume in Abriès im Queyras, near Ristolas.
And if you want to learn about the life of schoolchildren in the past, visit the Brunissard School Museum in Arvieux en Queyras in the Hautes Alpes. An enchantment with its old books, old benches, old notebooks and that smell of chalk which is eternal.
You can also visit, taking advantage of your presence in these places, the old copper mine of Saint-Véran, a real open-air museum unique in the Hautes Alpes and the Arche des Cîmes in Ristolas, this museum of fauna and flora proposed by the Queyras Regional Natural Park which presents the diurnal and nocturnal animals of the Hautes Alpes.
Open from June to September and from Christmas to the end of March.
Soum Museum,
05350 Saint-Véran
Tel: 04 92 45 86 42
https://www.queyras-montagne.com/le-soum-musee-arts-et-traditions-saint-veran.html
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