Villa Gilera

As in many Italian towns, there are summer activities organized by the oratory (managed by the parish and involving volunteers). Essentially children of primary school (6-11 years old) do their summer homework and they are engaged in some games and team games.

The local Kindergarten is managed by a non profit association and – according to the availability of places – it is possible to enroll children between 18 months (they need to be able to walk) up to 5 years-old for the summer activities in July; also non residents can access to the service. During July the Kindergarten has a light program of activities and it is basically a game room; it also provides lunch.

In a new building behind Villa Clotilde from 2016, with an area on the first floor of Villa Clotilde also. This local museum has a collection of archeology and paleontology. It preserves some of the rich archeological finds of the territory and it has a large collection of fossils of the Grigna mountains. The museum also presents a small demo-ethnology-anthropological collection. The archeological session will be further developed: a few pieces of the paleontological collection will be highlighted in a more contextualized installation and a floor of the museum will be devoted to the relationship between man and the mountain (the topic at the centre of the Ecomuseo delle Grigne) with the demo-ethnology-anthropological collection and the contemporary art collection. One section is dedicated to material culture with the farmer objects exposition. Added to this is a focus on the Tapestry School of Esino Lario. It was possibly Luigi Furiosi, a designer employed by the Carcano family, industrialists in the field of tin and aluminum, who imagined the synthetic and symbolic representation of Mandello in View of Mandello, maybe to celebrate an important anniversary of the Carcano company. At the foothills of the mountains, in the central part of the tapestry, we can spot the hydraulic factory of Sheets of Tin Foil of the Carcano family who started their business in Somana in 1895. The village of Mandello del Lario is recognizable thanks to some distinctive marks: the mountains which surround it as a natural background, the lake, but mainly the churches and typical buildings of the village. Everything seems to be plunged in the blue shades of the sky and this confers the work an enchanted atmosphere. The Grape Harvest surely is a significant work of art, both in terms of size (220x160cm) and artist, the famous Umberto Lilloni. The tapestry won the golden medal at the 9th Triennale di Milano in 1951. It represents five women and a young boy harvesting grapes. It is as if the artist had stopped time, leaving the characters in the middle of their movement: even if all the characters have a precise task, they are shown together as if they were light figures on the tapestry's surface. The artist describes with particular attention some details (such as the gestures, the grapes, the baskets) while leaving the atmosphere and the space behind the characters undefined, as if in a fairy tale: a wonderful frame from a cartoon.