The Documental Centre of Culture and Work in Polesine was officially open in July 1992, but the gathering of objects, the preparation and dressing of the rooms had already been started 10 years before.
The Museum has been dressed and organized in order to divulge the strains of the workers of Polesine. In the period dating from the unity of Italy to the great flood of 1951, they strove to make labour in general and soil work in particular less fatiguing. With their efforts they meant to create a more human way of living in the place where they got their only sustenance.
The Museum went on growing more and more in size and importance, thanks to frequent grants from visitors and inhabitants living in the Municipalities on the ancient territory of the "Manegium" [translator's note: territory including the Municipalities of Trecenta (eastern part), Canda, Castelguglielmo, Pincara, San Bellino, Villanova del Ghebbo, Fratta and Villamarzana (western part)].
Moreover, it was improved with drawings, explanations and, above all, a teaching section, with a guidebook (from 1995) rich in good pictures.
The Museum has been further expanded to include at present:
The Documental Centre of Culture and Work in Polesine is an Ethnographic Museum that tries to reconstruct, as far as possible in a likely way, the typical places of the poor people from Polesine, who were usually linked to the land and the soil work. The reconstruction is, at times, rich in documents and items.
Therefore we have dressed some rooms destined to domestic life, such as the parents' bedroom, the children's bedroom and the kitchen: then the classroom, the typical room for peasants (with scythes, hoes, spades, ploughs, etc.) and the cowsheds and stables (with cow yokes, horse yokes, equipment for their breeding and attending), the cellar (with barrels, presses, equipment for grapes growing and working), the room for the blacksmith (with anvils, hammers, etc), the room for the carpenter (with saws, drills, planes, etc) the room for the dressmaker (with needles, fabric, sewing machines, etc), the room for the shoemaker (with pastes, lasts and various tools) and the rooms for peculiar activities, such as noodles and bread making, raw hemp working, spinning and weaving. Later a little oratory provided with everything was added: it contains a wooden altar, candlesticks, pictures, a ciborium. The aim was to reproduce a "capiteo", one of those small churches or oratories that up to some years ago were present in almost all the quarters of every town and have now completely disappeared in Fratta. They were mainly used as a meeting place for local festivals or for the folk religious celebrations dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the month of May.
The historic-photographic-documentary exhibition on the Carbonarist movement in Fratta and in Polesine (which also includes original documents) is set-up in three adjoining halls and teaches in a simple but comprehensive way the tragic yet glorious vicissitudes of the Carbonari in this area. Discovered by the Austro-Hungarian police, they were prosecuted and were first sentenced to death and then condemned to long years of imprisonment in the Spielberg fortress (where Silvio Pellico joined them one month later) and in Ljubljana's prison. The exhibition includes a rich library on this topic.
The historic-photographic-documentary exhibition on socialist martyr Giacomo Matteotti was set-up in 1974, on the 50th anniversary of his death, by Rome's Record Office. It consists of 58 sliding panels divided into 5 sections relating the main stages of Giacomo Matteotti's family, social and political life. He was kidnapped and savagely killed by Fascist hired killers on June 10th, 1924.
Since 2004, the Museum is housed in the sixteenth century palace belonging in the past to the Dolfin noble family and later donated to the "Il Manegium" Cultural Association by the Boniotti heirs.
After restoration, the Museum offers nowadays 900 square metres of exhibitions set up according to their ethnographic and historical theme.
The ethnographic sections reproduce as much as possible the real arrangement of objects and tools, while the historical sections prefer a teaching organization mainly dedicated to school students.
"IL Manegium Onlus" Cultural Group of Fratta Polesine runs the Museum.
All the members of the Group take part in the museum management.
They have different duties, such as opening, cleaning, collecting and setting objects, dressing places. The chairman is the person in charge for legal matters, The secretary and the public relations manager help him.
The Municipal Administration of Fratta and the Province of Rovigo, together with the Municipal Library and the schools, organize workshops, meetings and, above all, guided tours, thanks to the help of the "Tourism and Culture" Cooperative.
URL: http://www.smppolesine.it / fratta /eng_pagine/home.php | Last update: 03 August 2011 12:29:41