Museo della Civiltà Contadina e delle Tradizioni Popolari

Nardò's Museum of Peasant Civilization and Popular Traditions is a civic ethnographic collection housed in Castello Acquaviva d'Aragona. It focuses on the agricultural life and folk traditions of the Salento.

Why it matters

The museum preserves a record of the rural culture that shaped the territory around Nardò. Its subject—customs, traditions and the material history of agricultural life—complements the city's collections on local history, archaeology and geology.

What to notice

The museum forms part of the civic cultural complex in the castle, alongside the Museo della Città e del Territorio and the speleology museum. The castle itself adds a historical setting: a quadrangular fortress first recorded in the second half of the fifteenth century, later transformed into a noble residence and acquired by the municipality in 1933.

Context and history

The official municipal tourism portal lists the museum among Nardò's civic collections and gives its location in Castello Acquaviva d'Aragona. The castle's history includes its late-fifteenth-century construction, subsequent transformation and municipal acquisition.