Charlie Chaplin is shown in a scene from his 1931 film City Lights. A museum will be created in his Swiss mansion. (Associated Press)

A museum dedicated to screen legend Charlie Chaplin will open in 2011 in his former home on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Chaplin, famous for playing the Little Tramp, the character he created in Hollywood during the silent era, spent his last 20 years in the mansion at Corsier-sur-Vevey after being blacklisted and barred from the U.S. in 1952.

He raised eight of his 11 children there, among them Michael and Eugene Chaplin who lived in the home until recently.

The museum, to be run by the family-owned Fondation du Musée Charlie Chaplin, has been planned for more than 10 years.

"All the time we were here we had people coming to the door asking if they could walk around," said Michael Chaplin, 63. "Sometimes whole buses would come and we'd open up the gate to let them walk around the park. That put the seed of the idea in our minds that when we left it should become a museum."

The museum is to recall Chaplin's screen legacy, including films such as The Immigrant, City Lights and The Great Dictator, with multimedia exhibits and recreations that show the filmmaking process of the early part of the century.

It will also tell the story of Chaplin's career, from the music halls of London to his comic acting in Hollywood to his controversial parody of Hitler in The Great Dictator to his role in the creation of United Artists.

After being barred from the U.S. in 1952 because of suspicions that he harboured communist sympathies, Chaplin returned only briefly to Hollywood to accept an Academy Award for lifetime achievement.

Artifacts from his life, including the piano where he composed film scores and his extensive library, will be on display.

There will also be mementoes of his films, such as the machine from Modern Times that Chaplin used to portray the desperation of factory workers. Hollywood will be recreated in the form of film sets in two annex buildings.

The vintner's cellar of the mansion will be used to evoke the Victorian-era London of Chaplin's youth with its dark cobbled walkways.

The groups ARCO Architecture et Conseils SA of Switzerland and Expérience International of Canada first began working with the Chaplin family on the project in 2000.

However, neighbours initially opposed the idea of the museum and authorities only recently accepted the $50-million project.

With files from The Associated Press