The Museo Etnografico degli Usi e Costumi della Gente di Romagna (Ethnographic Museum of the Uses and Customs of the People of Romagna), inaugurated in 1981, was born out of the patient and passionate collection work promoted and activated since the late 1960s by a group of volunteers. In 1973 that group organized itself into an Ethnographic Committee, under the direction of Giuseppe Sebesta (ethnographer and museologist then director of the Museum of the Uses and Customs of the People of Trentino), with the aim of laying the scientific foundations for the establishment of a museum.
The first document mentioning the museum as a project and prospect dates back to 1971, and the City Council resolution establishing the museum to 1973.
Parallel to the field research and the continuous work of collecting ethnographic materials and artifacts, in the early 1970s plans were promoted to recover the municipal slaughterhouse (built in 1924) at that time used as a municipal depot, in order to allocate it to the constituting museum. In 1981 the municipal administration promoted a competition for the direction of the museum institute, and in 1983 the first statute defining its organization and management bodies was approved.
In November 1989, thanks to a grant from the Emilia Romagna Region, the museum will be inaugurated in its new extension and layout with the opening of new sections, and educational services.
The opening of the Ethnographic Center for Research and Documentation and the initiation and systematic organization of research campaigns and documentary production dates back to 1985. With this center, the museum equips itself with archives and scientific dissemination tools by setting up research laboratories to promote the study of folk traditions, the production of audiovisual documentation, texts, periodic exhibitions, conferences, study days and educational initiatives. In fact, the center has a library and newspaper library specializing in demo-ethno-anthropology and important archives of audiovisual, photographic and iconographic sources.
Since 1996 the museum has taken the organizational form of a public institution with cultural and managerial autonomy and has adopted the acronym MET ( Ethnographic Museum) in its logo.
A history that began in that 1971 saw the realization of an idea of a museum dedicated to cultural identity and folk traditions.
The Ethnographic Museum collects and preserves the testimonies of the people of an area rich in popular traditions: the Romagna region, and in particular the southern one, enclosed between the Apennines and the Adriatic coast. The objects and tools on display both in the indoor and outdoor rooms encapsulate the history and in a sense the soul of this territory, and help us understand its environment and everyday life.
In the Museum one encounters the history, culture, traditions of a people, in all its multiple and sometimes unknown aspects (symbols, rituals, society, art).
