Museo della Magia

The Museo della Magia, created by Don Silvio Mantelli, known as Mago Sales, devotes eighteen scenographic rooms, a theatre and a specialised library to the art of magic and illusionism.

Why it matters

Cherasco's Museo della Magia presents the history and practice of magic and illusionism. The collection includes 465 donated groups of objects, apparatus and conjuring memorabilia assembled over decades by Mago Sales. The result is not a cabinet of oddities but a narrative museum, arranged so that each room advances a chapter — the ancient origins of conjuring as a performed art, the tools of the trade, the forms a show can take, the legendary performers, and magic's long, uneasy dialogue with the occult.

What to notice

The scenography is part of the collection: its eighteen rooms use themed, theatrical settings to present the history of magic. The displays include magic apparatus and interpretive material about the techniques of illusion. The museum includes a theatre and a specialised library of more than 19,000 volumes on magic. The museum also functions as the public face of the Fondazione Mago Sales, an ONLUS founded in 2001 on Don Bosco's principles, which has supported children in poverty across more than 25 countries.

Context and history

The museum was created on the initiative of Don Silvio Mantelli, a Salesian priest and professional magician who spent years persuading the great names of international magic to donate their props, posters and memorabilia. He installed the collection in a former kindergarten in Cherasco, renovated and reconfigured for the museum's needs, and opened the museum in Cherasco. Beyond the exhibition, the museum's educational history includes programmes combining conjuring with science and storytelling. Its home in Cherasco, a town better known for treaties and snails than showbusiness, is part of its character: the museum gives the Langhe's cultural offer an unexpected popular-science dimension.