MUAM - Museo delle Arti e Mestieri

In Gubbio's San Martino quarter, a fifteenth-century noble residence now houses a museum devoted to work and craft. Across three floors, twenty sections of tools, settings and objects present trades that once sustained the city, from blacksmithing and pottery to tailoring and photography.

Why it matters

MUAM – Museo delle Arti e Mestieri is an ethno-anthropological collection devoted to ordinary labour: the carpenter's bench, the cobbler's last, the loom and the forge. The museum has three exhibition levels, ten installed spaces, twenty thematic sections, 670 square metres of displays and 2,150 objects.

What to notice

The displays group related trades across the palace floors. The first floor presents domestic and textile life, including a reconstructed peasant home, bread-making, carpentry, woodworking, shoemaking, tailoring, embroidery, hemp working and weaving, photography, and book arts. The second floor turns to other crafts: blacksmithing, gypsum working, pottery and maiolica, cement making, alchemy, quarrying, masonry and goldsmithing. A section on cycling offers a glimpse of twentieth-century popular culture. The ground floor is used for temporary exhibitions and cultural events.

Context and history

The museum occupies Palazzo Beni, a historic noble residence. Older buildings were joined for the Beni family after their return to Gubbio from exile. The palace hosted Martin V in 1420 and Julius II in 1506, and once held frescoes by Ottaviano Nelli. Surviving traces include painted coats of arms in the loggetta of the smaller courtyard and allegorical figures in a first-floor hall. The collection connects the palace’s historic rooms with the working lives of the surrounding community.