Museum The History of the Museum

The Ethnographic Museum of the Customs and Practices of the People of Romagna (“Il Museo Etnografico degli Usi e dei Costumi della gente di Romagna”), located at Santarcangelo, is the fruit of the research and studies made since 1981 by a group of volunteers interested in preserving the documents of farmworkers’ memory, of a territory characterized since ancient times by a predominantly agrarian economy.

This work of information gathering has recovered a vast amount of data: not only machinery and objects of rural civilization, but also interviews, photographs, and other documents.

These sources bear witness to the individual and collective life of the region, and today form the ethnographic patrimony of the museum, partially on display, and partially kept in archives and in storage.

The Met is situated in the outskirts of the city, in the old Macello (slaughterhouse) communal complex. This building dates from 1937-38, during the Fascist regime, as revealed by its monumental architecture in reinforced concrete.

Despite World War Two and various sanitary emergencies, the activity of the slaughterhouse continued to the 1970s, when it was closed down.

To this day, the complex retains its principal sections: the central block, now the main exhibition space; the keeper’s apartment, today used for offices; the stalls, where the section on vehicles and transportation is located; the workshop, providing services related not only to museum functions.

The park that surrounds the Met buildings itself represents a kind of eco-museum of the landscape, with the exhibition of farm equipment and elements that integrate the museum’s narrative with the relevant territory.