Museo-Giardino della Civiltà della Seta

Racconigi's Museum-Garden of Silk Civilization preserves the memory of the town's silk industry. Its collections interpret the work of the filande and setifici that shaped local economic and social life, alongside the cultivation of mulberry trees that sustained sericulture.

Why it matters

Silk production became a major part of Racconigi's economy from the early modern period. By the eighteenth century, the town had numerous factories and a large workforce connected with silk spinning. The museum records the industry and the lives of the workers, many of them women, whose labour linked the town with wider markets.

What to notice

The displays include machinery and tools used to reel silk from cocoons and materials illustrating the production process. Mulberry trees in the garden recall the leaves used to feed silkworms. Together, the objects and landscape connect the town's industrial history with its agricultural setting.

Context and history

Silk working in Racconigi is documented from the fifteenth century. Mulberry cultivation expanded in the early sixteenth century, and the town's statutes protected the trees by 1510. The industry grew substantially in later centuries; by the late eighteenth century, accounts describe about thirty-three factories and approximately four thousand workers. The setificio Chicco employed more than one hundred people around the beginning of the twentieth century. Competition from artificial fibres and the effects of two world wars weakened the industry; the last mill, Setificio Manissero, closed in 1948. The museum was established in 2017 in a former Clarisse convent through the initiative of local historian Mario Monasterolo and community supporters.