The World Capital of the Mediterranean Diet
According to its creator, the archaeologist Huges de Vareine, if the traditional museum is basically composed of three elements, namely collection, property, and visitors, a diffuse museum, or Ecomuseum, is based on three very different axes namely the heritage, the territory, and the community. The enhancement of these three aspects is the basis of the Ecomuseum of Pollica, which offers itself to its visitors as an ideal instrument to connect all the material and immaterial aspects of an extraordinary environmental, culinary, and traditional culture such as that of the Cilento.
History of the Museum
Opened in 1998 and managed by Legambiente together with the Living Museum of the Sea, with which it shares the seat of Palazzo Vinciprova, close to the beach of Pioppi, in the Municipality of Pollica, the Living Museum of the Mediterranean Diet offers events, workshops, and seminars that comprise an Ecomuseum spread out all over the territory of the Cilento.
Heritage
The museum has 6 exhibition rooms allocated to the history of the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle that it offers and represents. The exhibition itinerary covers key aspects of this diet: Pleasure, linked to the goodness of the food; Physical well-being, achieved thanks to this diet; and Culture, that acts as an example in a historical-anthropological journey through the culinary traditions of the Cilento region.
It is also possible to visit the personal library inside the museum of Dr Ancel Keys, an American epidemiologist and the person responsible for discovering the direct link between diet and cardiovascular illness. Father of the Mediterranean Diet, Keys lived in Pioppi for more than 40 years, a connection that his heirs subsequently aimed to reinforce by donating his vast library collection to the Museum of the Mediterranean Diet.