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Set up since 1997 in the historic Palazzo D'Aste - Del Carretto, in the medieval village, its first rooms offer eighteen sections on the ancient activities practised in the Toirano valley and its territory. Olive cultivation, considered to be the main one, is represented by tools used in the 19th and early 20th centuries, followed by reconstructions of the olive presses, called 'gumbi' in the local dialect, respectively moved by hydraulic power and moved by animals such as mules and donkeys. This is followed by the sections on viticulture with its 19th-century wine cellar, haymaking, wheat harvesting, and the crafts of blacksmithing, carpentry - cooper, shoemaker, packsaddle maker and watchmaker; these workshops are represented by tools dating back to the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. A large part of the exhibition is devoted to domestic life, with reconstructions of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century local dwellings, such as the kitchen with ceramics made in Savona, Albisola and Mondovì, the bedroom with its dowry chest, and the living room with its kitchen and dining room. Also visible in this area are a number of costumes with their accessories and numerous artefacts related to popular devotion. The museum dedicates two rooms to the local history of illustrious figures such as the patriot captain of the besagliere, Onesto Garassini, the patriot writer of the Risorgimento, Baccio Emanuele Maineri, and the founder of the "free public school", Giuseppe Polla, who established it in 1716 with a testamentary bequest. The tour also includes the Benedictine, later Carthusian, monasteries of St. Peter al Monte, the brotherhood of the Disciplinants of the Oratory of Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Sebastian the Martyr. The first part of the museum it’s concludes with a section dedicated to traditional Ligurian cribs, displaying the terracotta statuettes from Albisola, commonly known as "macaques", which arrived in the Varatella Valley during the annual S. Lucia fair. In the same sector there are paper artefacts and some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century statues depicting the "Holy Child", commonly called "Bambinelli". The second section of the museum offers six rooms of the palace meticulously reconstructed with furniture, textiles and furnishings, consisting of an aristocratic chapel recognised in 1759 by Pope Clement XIII, a small picture gallery with works from the 17th and 18th centuries, the boudoir, the dining room with a monumental 17th-century clock, the parade room with a four-poster bed and finally the drawing room with coats of arms, also known as the fireplace room. The path includes the "courtyard-garden" with exotic botanical species and a number of stone elements, including some ancient millstones that belonged to local oil mills and a 16th-century marble basin from the Toirano paper mills.

Toirano

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