The Museum was born from a school project by the local middle school back in 1997 and has gradually enriched itself with new artifacts through research carried out by the students themselves in the countryside of the town, in cellars, and artisanal workshops. A search for lost time to bring back to life, through objects, smells, flavors, joys, bitterness, pains, poverty, and wealth of peasant civilization. Castel San Lorenzo was and still is above all a town of oil and wine. The objects can only reflect this vocation, and so in the Museum we find: the fourth, the wineskin, the vat, the tinieddu, the coop, the small barrel, the mastieddu, the stringituru, the dicalitru, the pump, the filter, etc., but certainly, life could not be lived on wine and oil alone. Peasant civilization is characterized by a certain self-sufficiency, and therefore, people had to produce everything they needed, from pasta to meat. In the town, if we go back at least fifty years, there was only one butcher shop that sold only goat meat, which people bought especially on holidays. In the Museum, therefore, we find various sickles for harvesting wheat, irons that gave shape to various types of pasta, traps for mice that raided the wheat, equipment used for pig processing, from breeding to preservation. Certainly self-sufficiency, but then as now there was also space reserved for festivals, especially the Patron Saint festivals, and so, we have old instruments: drums, trumpets, and trombones. There are also various tools related to the artisanal world. The peasants themselves wove wicker to make baskets, chairs, tables, but there were also skilled artisans who worked wood, stone, and iron. It is a whole austere world that lives and beats and gives lessons to new generations unfortunately educated to consumerism, children, victims, and executioners of globalization. The sore point of the Museum is its location: the Municipal Administration is searching for suitable premises, but at the moment it is still located at the middle school where a reorganization and reclassification of the objects themselves is underway with the philological indication of the terms. _
Information about Museum of Peasant Culture and Civilization of Castel San Lorenzo
Via G. Tommasini snc,
84049 Castel San Lorenzo (Salerno)
0828944072
smscastelsanlorenzo@libero.it
Source: MIBACT
