Camerette di Don Bosco

Two rooms at Valdocco where Don Bosco lived and worked for decades form the historic core of the Museo Casa Don Bosco. Restored to their period appearance, they preserve the setting where the saint prayed, wrote and died.

Why it matters

The Camerette di Don Bosco are the preserved private rooms of Saint John Bosco inside the Salesian mother house at Valdocco, where he and his mother Margherita welcomed the first street boys and orphans and where the Salesian congregation was born. Don Bosco's bedroom was his home and workplace for twenty-seven years, from 1861 until his death in 1888. Opened as the Museo Casa Don Bosco in October 2020, the museum documents the origins, pedagogy and devotion of the nineteenth-century educator.

What to notice

Don Bosco's bedroom retains a simple bed, the desk where he wrote and devotional images. Other domestic spaces of the early Oratory include kitchens, refectories and workshops where trades were taught. The museum's themed sections address origins, holiness, pedagogy, wisdom and Marian devotion. A room devoted to his canonisation documents the priest of Valdocco's place in the Church's calendar. Everyday objects from the first community give the collection a documentary and intimate character.

Context and history

Valdocco was a poor suburb when Don Bosco began his Oratory in the 1840s, starting from the shed of Casa Pinardi before larger buildings rose around it. The rooms he occupied became a memorial almost immediately after his death in 1888, guarded by the Salesians as the cradle of their charism. For decades the Camerette were preserved as a memorial; the 2020 museum incorporated them into thematic galleries with conservation standards. The museum shares a complex with the Basilica of Maria Ausiliatrice, the public counterpart to the rooms Don Bosco occupied.