Museum of the Customs and Traditions of the Trentino People, San Michele all’Adige

The Museum of the Traditions and Customs of the Trentino People presents its vocation of study and preservation of the culture of a people, with particular attention to the agrosilvopastoral reality of the Alpine mountain, becoming the largest Italian ethnographic museum of local scope. Founded in 1968 by Giuseppe Šebesta (1919-2005), since 1972 the museum has been housed in the prestigious setting of the ancient Augustinian Provostry of San Michele all’Adige, with the rich Baroque church: it hosts a rich museum path and intense educational and service activities. Since 2002 the San Michele Museum has taken on as its own section the Provincial Archive for Oral Tradition. The exhibition is spread over five floors, with 43 rooms and over 12,000 objects on display: on the ground floor with sections dedicated to agriculture, the mill, the forge, the nail factory, the blacksmith’s shop and animal husbandry, the copper foundry, wrought iron; on the first floor with textile fibers, the mountain hut, beekeeping, the forest, carts and sleds, the Venetian sawmill, wood art, wedding customs; on the second floor with the tiled stove, ceramics, the kitchen; on the third floor with traditional costumes, rituals of the year, music and bands, popular devotion, hunting; finally in the cellar with sections dedicated to wine and grappa, the caneva and the Šebesta rooms