Il National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions is the only state museum in Italy with specific expertise in the field of demo-ethno-anthropological subjects. Its purpose is the documentation of the popular traditions of all Italian regions and it preserves over one hundred thousand documents, acquired from 1906 to the present.
The Museum originated from the Italian Ethnography Exhibition held in Rome in 1911 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy and was founded by Lamberto Loria (1855-1913), ethnologist, who after carrying out numerous study expeditions in extra-European countries, realized, during a brief stay in Sannio, that ethnographic research was also needed in early 20th century Italy. It was indeed necessary to document that agro-pastoral culture which at the time was undergoing great changes due to progressive industrialization of nearby and distant areas and the consequent emigration from rural centers.
All the documentary material of the Museum is currently available to the public through numerous services: the library, the historical archive that preserves documents related to the acquisition of objects, the print cabinet, the photographic archive, the sound archive, the visual anthropology archive, the ethnographic deposits, the inventory cataloging and loan office, the restoration laboratory, and the audiovisual laboratory. The Museum, due to its specificity and uniqueness throughout the national territory, is also a center for data collection, research, and documentation.
