Museo Etnografico del Friuli

In a frescoed townhouse in Borgo Grazzano, Udine's civic museums preserve everyday culture from Friuli: domestic life, rural crafts, popular devotion, medicine, music and traditional dress. The displays draw on the collections of Gaetano Perusini and Luigi and Andreina Ciceri and cover the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.

Why it matters

The museum continues the work of Gaetano Perusini, whose 1963 project helped establish the study of popular arts and traditions in Friuli, and incorporates the collections donated by Luigi and Andreina Ciceri. Since 2010 it has occupied Palazzo Giacomelli, where a historic domestic setting complements the objects and practices represented in the collections.

What to notice

The ground-floor displays centre on the fogolâr, the open hearth that organised the Friulian household, alongside festival customs, clocks from Val Pesarina and woodcraft. Other rooms present ex-votos and popular devotion, medicine and pharmacy, music, games, spinning and weaving. The Sala Stucchi holds carved wooden sculptures from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, while the Banco dei pegni reconstructs the pawn counter of the Monte di Pietà of Cividale. Traditional clothing and other textiles form part of the upper-floor collections.

Context and history

Palazzo Giacomelli has a sixteenth-century core and was acquired by its last private owner, Sante Giacomelli, in 1900. A late-nineteenth-century remodelling added painted brickwork and decorative motifs to the façade; the central salon contains allegories of Europe and Africa attributed to Giovanni Masutti. Furniture on the first floor comes from the workshop of Udinese carpenter Antonio Brusconi. The museum's collections and domestic setting together document regional material culture across several centuries.