Museo dell'Agricoltura

Cesena's agricultural museum occupies the Femmina tower, or Palatium, within the Rocca Malatestiana. Farm tools, domestic furnishings and reconstructed rooms preserve the material culture of rural Romagna inside a former fortress.

Why it matters

The collection documents the work and household life of farming communities as mechanisation transformed their practices. Its setting connects the countryside once governed from the fortress with the daily labour that sustained it.

What to notice

The collection encompasses animal husbandry, carts and transport, the furnished rooms of a Romagna farmhouse, and crafts practised during winter. Implements associated with wheat cultivation, threshing and milling stand alongside equipment for pressing grapes and making wine. These groups describe different aspects of an agricultural year rather than a single chronological progression.

Context and history

The museum opened in 1974, following the closure of the fortress prisons in 1970. Its creation formed part of the monument's adaptation to cultural use. The surrounding fortress developed from work begun under Galeotto Malatesta in 1380, with later campaigns continuing after Malatesta rule and reaching completion in 1477.