Museo degli usi e costumi della gente trentina, Ethnographic museum in San Michele all'Adige, Italy
The Museo degli usi e costumi della gente trentina is an ethnographic museum displaying over 12,000 objects across five floors and 43 rooms that document mountain life in Trentino. The collection includes agricultural tools, craftsmanship materials, and everyday items that show how people lived and worked in this region.
Giuseppe Šebesta founded this museum in 1968 within an Augustinian monastery, establishing Italy's principal regional ethnographic institution. Housing the collection in this historic building allowed the preservation of materials that document Trentino's cultural memory.
The displays show wedding customs, textile production, and woodworking as people in Trentino actually practiced them in daily life. These crafts and rituals reveal how mountain communities organized their celebrations and skilled work over time.
The museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday, allowing time to explore the many rooms filled with objects from different areas of life. It helps to allow plenty of time since the collections are extensive and spread across multiple floors.
The institution houses a Provincial Archive of Oral Tradition with field recordings of folk songs and spoken language from Trentino collected since 1954. These audio recordings preserve voices and melodies that would otherwise disappear from memory.
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