Where :
Cantine di Gandria
6978
Gandria
Tel: +41 (0)91 923 98 43 (museo) - +41 (0)62 893 10 33 (Direz. Dogane)
Fax: +41 (0)62 893 12 61
Website:
www.musee-suisse.ch
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Information :
Durata della visita: 1
Tickets: Free entry
When
Mon... Sun: 13.30-17.30
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The building that houses the Customs Museum is on the opposite side of lake from Lugano, in the area known as Cantine di Gandria are and may be reached by means of a short, suggestive boat trip; in fact, it is built directly on the lake, at the border between Italy and Switzerland, in an inaccessible area covered in thick vegetation.
The first customs post was set up in 1856 and is still known today as "The Red House", whereas, in fact, the latter was actually only built in 1904 as a customs post and anti-smuggling base and became a museum in 1935.
A big exhibition on three different floors of the museum recalls times gone by, in which smuggling flourished. On the ground floor, the old customs post as it probably appeared in 1904 has been reconstructed.
One recognizes the places where customs officers worked and here the wax figure of a smuggler being handcuffed by two officers and the adjacent guards' lodgings are exhibited. Several customs documents are also displayed: a diary, coins of the times, scales and other measuring instruments. On the first floor, the history of how the Confederation system developed to present day is explained; there is a monument in memory of the border guards who fell in the fulfilment of their duty.
The second floor displays a whole arsenal of weapons coming from Italy, France, Great Britain and the United States that were confiscated from partisans, runaways or fugitives while they were attempting to clandestinely cross the Swiss border.
There is also a curious exhibit of equipment and tools used by smugglers and poachers, besides documents on some of the most refined tricks which people used to bypass customs laws.
Among these, a small submarine with an underwater engine driven by a smuggler who navigates with his head just under the water's surface, which was seized with its load of a ton of salami?is exhibited.
In 1944, the permanent collection was turned into an interactive exhibit, which was further enlarged in 1994 with computerized and audiovisual novelties. By means of videos and photographs, modern systems for border surveillance are presented, such as infrared night surveillance equipment and devices for finding counterfeit documents.
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