Menu :

Histoire

Personnages

Nature

Itinéraires par région

The Val Varatella Ethnographic Museum in Toirano is one of the most important museums of its kind in Liguria. It exhibits an important collection that extends over eighteen sections and consists of five thousand exhibits. Spread over several floors, it is housed in the 16th-century stables of the Palazzo d'Aste, which later passed into the hands of the Del Carretto family. The museum occupies the main floor of the palace. Here it no longer deals with the rural life of past times but immerses the visitor in the perfectly preserved rooms of a noble residence furnished in the taste of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. This interesting museum-within-a-museum is the focus of our proposed itinerary, which is based on the ethnographic museum. The eighteen sections of the museum provide a wealth of exhibits on many aspects of the daily life, production activities and domestic life of our ancestors in the Varatella Valley in past centuries. As is always the case when sketching a portrait of this way of life, the very important subject of popular religiosity is not forgotten. The cultivation of the olive tree and the production of oil are certainly a salient aspect of the Museum, and this is obvious, given the extraordinary importance that these have had for centuries in the daily life of the local populations, just as important were the cultivation of the vine and the production of wine, and then haymaking, an essential activity if we think of it as the basis of livestock breeding and therefore of the production of meat and cheese: all dealt with in their own ad hoc sections. Wheat harvesting, which produced flour and bread, and craft activities merit other museum areas. Very interesting are the reconstructions of two specific rooms of the old houses of the time: the kitchen and the bedroom. By means of these reconstructions, the visitor really finds himself immersed in another time. The section dedicated to textiles is very important for the value of the artefacts it preserves, with costumes dating back to the 18th century. A number of no less important sections complete the large exhibition: one dedicated to popular religiosity, with a large collection of very valuable devotional prints; the section on illustrious characters from Toirano of the past, including Captain Polla, a seventeenth-century benefactor; the section dedicated to the monastic orders, where the history of the important Carthusian settlement is recounted, which we will discuss in a dedicated point of interest. The section dedicated to the Confraternity of the Disciplined, with a hooded cloak from the early 19th century, and that of period photographic material complete the rich collection.

Liguria

GRITACCESS:

Ethnographic Museum of Val Varatella > St Lucy’s Cave

Type Itinéraire : roaming

Thème : History