A border between poverty and persecution

Smugglers and refugees between Italy and Switzerland during the Second World War II.

With this temporary exhibition, we return in a certain sense to the origins of the Customs Museum, to the time when it was known to the public as the 'smuggling museum'. The border with Italy is by far the one where smuggling was practised with the greatest intensity in the past. The exhibition illustrates its old and solid tradition, focusing on its most epic period: the years of the Second World War, when, after the armistice of 8 September 1943, the southern border experienced a huge influx from Italy of smugglers, but also of refugees.