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The Visitor Centre of Lesina is a facility born as an Environmental Documentation Centre, thanks to some local volunteers: in 1995, they started collecting historical evidence and documents to eventually put together this unique and quite remarkable repository.

In 1998, the documentation centre became “Naturmusis”, one of the six sections of the Naturalistic Museum System of the province of Foggia, themed on the “lagoon avifauna”.
In May 2002, it became the new Visitor Centre-Aquarium of the Lesina Lagoon, including the Naturalistic Museum, the “Fisherman’s House” Ethnographic museum, and the brackish water aquarium (previously connected to the Lesina lagoon by underground canals).

The Aquarium is home to lagoon fish species, with 14 tanks (21.000 litres of water) which used to be connected to the lagoon. There are also some tanks housing species typical of the freshwater lakes around this area.

The Naturalistic Museum is focused on the very features of the local environment: first of all the lagoon, with its very particular biodiversity (the perfect opportunity for learning about the local geomorphology, the fauna and the flora of the wetland); then, the island forest, featuring a rarest Mediterranean scrub and recently reforested with Cistus clusi; eventually, the museum deals with the sea, exhibiting a remarkable collection of shells and marine dioramas.

The Ethnographic Museum features two sections dedicated to ancient fishing tools and the reconstruction of a typical local house. The whole exhibition is a valuable testament to the culture of the local community, and therefore to its economic and social structure, the local traditions, the living conditions, the main activities, clothing, religious practices, and food.

THE WILD ORCHIDS

This area of Gargano, like the whole promontory, represents a biodiversity hub due to the presence of wild orchids: 80 different species belonging to 17 genera have been catalogued so far, some of which endemic or sub-endemic such as Ophrys promontorii, Ophrys sipontensis, Ophrys argolica subsp. biscutella, Ophrys bertolonii subsp. bertoloniiformis, Ophrys holosericea subsp. apulica, Ophrys holosericea subsp. parvimaculata, Ophrys exaltata subsp. archipelagos, Ophrys scolopax subsp. horned, Ophrys iricolor subsp. lojaconoi, Orchis quadripunctata, and Serapias orientalis subsp. apulica.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)