Museo della Canapa

The Hemp Museum in Sant'Anatolia di Narco preserves the history of a crop once central to the Valnerina economy. Housed in a former town hall, its tools, textiles and working looms document the cultivation and processing of hemp and its use in everyday life.

Why it matters

Hemp was widely cultivated in Umbria until the first half of the twentieth century. In the Valnerina, it grew along the Nera and in mountain areas, and the fibre supported local agriculture and textile production. The museum, inaugurated in 2008, is part of the Ecomuseo della Dorsale Appenninica Umbra and preserves the memory of this rural economy and the people who worked it.

What to notice

The collection follows the hemp cycle from cultivation through retting and drying to gramolatura and cardatura, using tools associated with canapari and funari, who processed fibre into cordage. Textiles from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries include household linen, grain sacks and woven trousseaus. Spinning Dolls, a 2016 work by British artist Liliane Lijn, evokes the gestures of spinning. The adjoining weaving laboratories use hemp-and-lime bioarchitecture, and the museum's textile project includes hand-loom weaving.

Context and history

Hemp supplied material for ropes, fishing nets, clothing and household linen. Sowing and processing varied with altitude and local conditions; in mountain areas, stalks could be dried in bread ovens after baking. As synthetic fibres and agricultural change brought cultivation to an end, the knowledge risked disappearing. The museum and the ecomuseum network preserve this history and connect it with textile practice.