Museum Engiadinais / Engadiner Museum

In the townscape of St. Moritz, the Engadiner Museum, as an ethnographic local museum, plays a formative role in understanding the region’s domestic and everyday culture in the Upper Engadine. The building stands at Via dal Bagn 39, on the border of the traditional quarters Bad and Dorf, and is an early example of the Heimatstil in Graubünden.

A collector’s addition was erected in 1905–1906 in the typical Engadin-house format, deliberately incorporating historic building elements to preserve endangered interiors. The bay window, coat-of-arms panel and corridor grille come from the demolished Salis House Turtach in Celerina; the carved wooden gate with its forged lock was taken from Zernez. Since 1911 the museum has been owned by a foundation, after being purchased with support from across Switzerland. At the sides, arcades modeled on the old Chà Gronda monastery in Unter-Scuol articulate the façade.

The exhibition program centers on the authentic rooms of an Engadin house; these are augmented by permanent and changing special exhibitions that document the transformation of the high valley in the 19th century from an agriculturally shaped region into a centre of international tourism.

The exhibition is arranged by floor: on the ground floor are a sulèr (Engadin bock sled), a farmhouse parlour from Zuoz (mid-17th century) and a kitchen with a hearth. The first floor displays spinning wheels from Brail (1580), ornate state rooms from Zuoz (17th century), furniture in the small corridor, the ornate parlour of the landed-gentry family à Marca from Mesocco (1621), a reconstruction of a vaulted hall from S-chanf (mid-17th century) and the Visconti-Venosta state hall from Grosio (Veltlin, early 17th century). On the second floor are a corridor based on the Planta House, Samedan (1589), an Engadin parlour from the 18th century, a late Gothic bedroom with a four-poster bed dating from the plague period around 1575, a late Gothic guest parlour from Savognin (1579), a storeroom, a natural history cabinet from patrician houses, a room for temporary exhibitions, the attic corridor with traditional costumes, and a High Gothic hall of the episcopal domain administration from Savognin (before 1300). The prehistoric spring enclosure of the St. Mauritius spring (1411 BC), which was once kept in the basement (Cuort), has been on display since July 2014 in the Forum Paracelsus in St. Moritz-Bad.