Distretto Culturale del Nuorese

Nuoro
Museo del Costume

The Museo del Costume, inaugurated in 1976, is Sardinia’s main ethnographic museum.

After a major renovation that involved structural expansion and improvement and updating the themes and displays, the Museo del Costume was reopened to the public on 19 December 2015.

The new museum offers a comprehensive view of the island’s traditional life, covering themes like work, celebrations, homes, clothing, food, religion and the popular imagination.

Nuoro, Museo del Costume. Hall of Mamoiada masks - CC BY 3.0 Sailko, Commons Wikimedia - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nuoro,_museo_etnografico_sardo,_interno,_sala_delle_maschere,_mamuthones_e_issocadores_di_mamoiada,_01.jpg

This extraordinary cultural experience is spread across ten thematic rooms.

The first room introduces Sardinia through a timeline of events stretching from prehistory to 1950. In the same room, a video wall presents videos and images of the island’s rural, coastal and mountain landscapes.

The second room is devoted to the origins of ethnography and collecting in Sardinia.

The three subsequent rooms focus on the main areas of traditional production on the island, with large-scale dioramas that reconstruct typical scenes.

Nuoro, Museo del Costume. Tapestry - CC BY 3.0 Sailko, Commons Wikimedia - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sardegna,_arazzo,_1900-1910_ca.jpg

In a space devoted to weaving techniques, the seventh room displays equipment and tools for making textiles and the textiles themselves, in glass cases and drawers.
On the upper floor, there is an extraordinary display of traditional Sardinian clothing.

The ninth room features a reconstruction of a church chapel, displaying more than 450 pieces of jewellery and amulets arranged amidst religious images, furnishings and liturgical objects, attesting to the extraordinary devotion of the faithful who flocked here.