Museo di Storia della Mezzadria Sergio Anselmi

The Museum of the History of Sharecropping Sergio Anselmi occupies the former convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in the hills above Senigallia. Its collection of around two thousand objects, arranged across thirty themed rooms, documents rural life and the sharecropping system in the Marche.

Why it matters

Sharecropping, or mezzadria, shaped rural life in the Marche from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into the twentieth century. In this system, a farming family cultivated a property and shared its harvest with the landowner. The museum records the material culture of this relationship and the changes that followed the decline of sharecropping after the Second World War. Historian Sergio Anselmi's work shaped the institution, which has been housed in the convent since 1978.

What to notice

The former Renaissance convent's cloister leads into rooms devoted to agricultural work and domestic life. Objects include olive presses, grain-sorting machines, tools, hemp-processing equipment, looms and a kitchen. Other rooms present crops such as wheat, wine, maize and sugar beet, with historical photographs by Mario Giacomelli and Mario Carafòli. The Antiquarium includes finds from the Iron Age through the Roman period.

Context and history

The museum opened in the Santa Maria delle Grazie complex in 1978. It takes its name from Sergio Anselmi, the historian who studied the region's rural past. The museum also holds books from his library, alongside publications on agriculture and the history of the Marche. The late-fifteenth-century convent is itself part of the area's history, setting the rural objects within a former religious complex in the countryside.