Museu Gianluigi Secco's Dolomite Masks Museum

Welcome to the Gianluigi Secco Museum of Dolomite Masks, a space created by the Borgo Piave ETC association in October 2023 to showcase the collection of Archaic Masquerades of the Belluno Dolomites that Gianluigi Secco created in the late 1980s to spread knowledge of our culture and communities throughout Italy and Europe.

From 1988 to 2019, the collection toured and was exhibited in various Italian cities, from the Rimini Meeting to Udine, from Piazzola sul Brenta to Treviso, and from Vigo di Fassa to Romania, Hungary, and Croatia. It was last displayed at Villa Patt in Sedico, Valbelluna, where it was subsequently dismantled and no longer had a future.

Our association planned to hold a small exhibition in February 2023 featuring just three mannequins, paintings created from prints by Franco Fiabane, and wooden faces. However, realizing that the entire collection needed to be revitalized, we decided to take care of it, and from May to October 2023, every afternoon free of charge, we restored the mannequins and set up the museum.

The headquarters of the Gianluigi Secco Museum of Dolomite Masks is the 15th-century Palazzo Secco, one of the few buildings in the city still frescoed on the outside. It reflects all the characteristics of Venetian palaces, albeit on a smaller scale due to the Belluno climate.

Inhabited from 1779 to the 1980s by the Secco family, coppersmiths from Sacile, it now belongs to a Castelfranco Veneto company that has embraced the project of creating a cultural center of reference beyond the province for Gianni Secco's Dolomite masquerades. Initially, the five rooms on the ground floor will be available, and from the fall of 2024, the first floor will also be available, housing three exhibition rooms, an office, and a library.

Thus, by pure chance, his collection found a home in a building with the same surname. The rooms use 100% certified renewable energy.