Museo degli usi e costumi della gente trentina, San Michele all’Adige

The Museum of the Uses and Customs of the Trentino People presents its vocation for the study and preservation of the culture of a people, with particular attention to the agro-forestry-pastoral reality of the Alpine mountain, becoming the largest local Italian ethnographic museum. Founded in 1968 by Giuseppe Šebesta (1919-2005), since 1972 the museum has been housed in the prestigious setting of the ancient Augustinian Prepositura of San Michele all’Adige, with the rich Baroque church: it combines a rich museum path and intense educational activities and services. Since 2002 the Museum of San Michele has incorporated the Provincial Archive for Oral Tradition as its own section. The layout develops 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 shop, blacksmithing and animal husbandry, the copper foundry, wrought iron; on the first floor with textile fibers, the mountain pasture, beekeeping, the forest, carts and sledges, 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, the rites of the year, music and bands, popular devotion, hunting; finally, in the cellar with sections dedicated to wine and grappa, the wine cellar and the Šebesta rooms