Lions Club Valsabbia: Gavardo opens the new social year with archaeology and discoveries on Monte Budellone

Lions Club Valsabbia will officially open its new social year on Thursday 17 September in Gavardo with an evening divided into two parts. The programme combines the promotion of local historical heritage with exploration of the area near Lake Garda. It includes a guided cultural visit to the exhibition centre of the Valle Sabbia Archaeological Museum, followed by a public conference on recent speleological surveys carried out on the mountain massif shared with Prevalle.

The club’s activities begin at 7.15 p.m. at the museum premises at 27 Piazza De Medici. Members and guests will take part in a guided tour of the institution’s exhibition rooms, followed by a convivial aperitif.

From 8.45 p.m., the event moves to the Sala Bruni Conter, where all citizens are invited to attend the presentation of the volume entitled “Le grotte del Monte Budellone. Gavardo-Prevalle (Bs)”. During the meeting, speleologist Massimo Pozzo will present the fieldwork and his professional experience in underground research.

Gavardo’s museum is housed in an old building that historically belonged to the Bishop’s Curia. It preserves evidence of the human and material development of the Valsabbia area and the western shore of Lake Garda, covering a period from the Middle Palaeolithic, around one hundred thousand years ago, to the post-Renaissance era.

The exhibition route includes artefacts from key archaeological contexts in the area:

The museum’s collection continues to grow thanks to excavation campaigns and finds coordinated across the area with the contribution of the Gruppo Grotte Gavardo.

The publication presented at the conference outlines the results of a census, exploration and mapping programme coordinated by Massimo Pozzo through the joint work of Agartis Odv and Underland. The research led to the identification of twelve previously unknown cavities. These add to the eighteen structures documented during the past century of surveys, bringing the overall underground network to approximately two kilometres.

The sites described include the Buco del Frate, a cavity at an altitude of 250 metres in the Prevalle area, originally explored by speleologist Corrado Allegretti, and the Büs dei Lader site, known for prehistoric finds linked to the presence of Neanderthal man. The research and data documented in the colour volume were accompanied by a documentary film shown in July.