Lions Club Valsabbia Opens Social Year in Gavardo, Linking Archaeology and Monte Budellone Discoveries

The Lions Club Valsabbia officially kicks off its 2024–25 association year on Thursday, September 17 in Gavardo with a two-part public event combining local heritage and an exploration of the area near Lake Garda. The program includes a guided cultural visit inside the Museo Archeologico della Valle Sabbia, followed by a public conference presenting new speleological surveys carried out on the mountain massif shared with Prevalle.

Activities begin at 7:15 p.m. at the museum in Piazza De Medici 27, where members and guests will tour the exhibition spaces and then join an aperitif. From 8:45 p.m., the event moves to the Sala Bruni Conter, open to all citizens, to present the volume “Le grotte del Monte Budellone. Gavardo-Prevalle (Bs)”, with speleologist Massimo Pozzo outlining fieldwork activities and his professional path in underground research.

The museum’s collections trace human and material developments in the Valsabbia area and the western Lake Garda shoreline from the Middle Paleolithic (around 100,000 years ago) to the post-Renaissance period, featuring sites such as Monte Covolo, Bronze Age pile-dwelling contexts from the Lucone basin in Polpenazze (UNESCO-listed Alpine arc), and the Roman necropolis of Lugone in Salò. The conference highlights a coordinated census, exploration and mapping effort that identified 12 previously unknown caves, expanding the documented underground network to about two kilometers, including sites such as the Buco del Frate and the Büs dei Lader, along with a documentary film shown in July.
Italian Version