The Documental Centre of Peasant Civilization of Porto Tolle, started its activity at the beginning of the 1980s.
Some people, who owned different objects, decided to put them together in order to carry out an exhibition on occasion of Villadose Annual Fair.
The enterprise was repeated the following year, until the exhibition became permanent, in premises provided by the Town Administration.
The exhibition changed its seat various times, before being set in the present seat: in Cà Tiepolo (an outlying suburb of Porto Tolle), between the Primary School and the IPSIA School. Some of the objects are exhibited at Enel Information Centre, near the power station in Polesine Camerini.
Targets of the Centre: to keep the memory of our traditions and history alive. To make young people know about their forefathers’ life and the objects they used everyday.
It is a route of continual growth with the gathering of materials, promotions and evaluation of peasants and fishermen’s traditions.
The exhibition is a collection of tools, photographs and typical objects of work and of everyday life of the peasant civilization.
The objects are kept in a shed provided by the Town Administration.
This seat is temporary: we are waiting to be given an adequate seat.
The exhibition is divided into two sectors:
Everyday Life: kitchen, bedroom, school objects, toys, domestic activities and other items.
Trade Activities: agriculture, fishing, handicraft and various trades.
A wooden panel divides the different sectors. Pictures of those days are on the wall.
Our personnel consists exclusively of voluntary workers who show the visitors, while providing a guide to the exhibition.
The same people attend to object collection and maintenance.
The volunteers are also busy in:
Popularizing the peasant civilization with promotion activities:
- lectures in the schools of the town
- lectures at the Polesine Popular University
- production of videotapes (subjects: land reform, flood, ferry boats, visit of the exhibition, etc.)
- demonstration of the threshing of rice and corn with period machinery, on the occasion of village festivals and for the schools.
- Research activity
- research of material to enrich the exhibition further on.
- recorded collection of the village old people’s stories.
Local associations and institutions, such as the Town Administration, schools, Library and Pro Loco, often cooperate in carrying out the various initiatives.
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