A large collection of objects, photographs and documents, started in the 1950s by professor Ivan Tardivello, made us think of ordering all the material for a “Civic Collection”. In 1968 the objects of the civic collection were exhibited in the Council room of the Town Hall and in the mayor’s office. Then, in 1973, the finds of Risorgimento, World War I, World War II as well as curiosities, were moved to two rooms of the Municipal Library G.G. Bronziero, where they remained until 1977. Meanwhile other finds had been collected and kept in the premises of the ex Pawnshop, disused for long years and squalid.
At last the Civic Museum was officially open on June, 12, 1977, after the restoration of the ex Pawnshop.
The idea of professor Ivan Tardivello, founder of the Museum, is that in every section the protagonist is man, with his enthusiasms, his efforts, his fears, his successes and his failures.
The visitors, especially the students, can realize that the history studied at school does not consist of events occurred elsewhere, that do not concern us. On the contrary, the trifling history of our town and of Polesine is a detail of the most important history that we study on books.
In the museum it is possible to see how the citizens from Badia went through their way, playing an active role in the historical Italian events and in the stages of the progress.
The Civic Museum was named after the historian Antonio Eugenio Baruffaldi, who was born in Badia Polesine on December, 16, 1862.
He was a post office employee, like his father. He first worked in Badia Polesine, then in Padua, where he moved in 1887.
Despite the distance from his native town, he devoted himself to the historical research on Badia and on Polesine, with great love and passion. He published his work in Padua and Vicenza, the town where he had moved for job.
He died in Vicenza on January, 29, 1940.
In the museums we can see objects of various historical periods, the secular and religious institutions, the pieces of pottery, the photographs, the pastime activities and a miniature of the floating mill on the Adige.
An important section houses, above all, paintings by artists from Badia of XIX and XX cen. and the “Last Supper” (234 x 722 cm.), painted by Girolamo Bonsignori in XVI cen.
Library
Photograph Archive housing, above all, pictures of Badia Polesine from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth
Poster Archive, housing more than four hundred bills of Badia theatres, risen between the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth: Teatro Sociale, Teatro Politeama, Sala Concordia and Cinema Modernissimo (end XIX - first half of XX cen.)
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