The Museum is located in the apt setting of medieval houses in Milite Bernardo Street in the Citadel. The houses were probably built towards the end of the 15th or the beginning of the 16th century. The architectural features are in Sicilian style, and may owe something to the influence of the Chiaramonte family of Sicily and southern Italy when they were Counts of Malta in the late 14th century. It seems probable that this style survived locally after it had become obsolete in Sicily.
The rustic domestic interiors are relatively plain, but pleasant, and contrast sharply with the more delicate façades with their rounded doorways, double windows divided by a slender column and the finely carved stonework. The houses are considered as an outstanding example of late medieval domestic architecture. To ensure their preservation, these houses were rehabilitated into a Folklore Museum in 1983.
The exhibits displayed on the ground floor levels relate to rural trades and skills such as agriculture and stone-masonry. Here, you’ll find various traditional, agricultural implements including sickles, spades, winnowing forks, shovels and ploughs, together with a selection of grinding mills of various sizes, both manual and beast-driven.
There are also traditional stone-dressing tools as well as a large selection of tools used by carpenters and blacksmiths. Grain and liquid measures, as well as different types of weights and scales used in steelyards and by grocers, are also on display. The mezzanine floor exhibits domestic, and important, Gozitan crafts such as lace-making and weaving as well as minor ones such as book-binding.
The first floor, which used to be living quarters, hosts an exhibition of items relating to hobbies such as hunting as well as the modeling of miniature churches, replete with religious accessories.
On the same floor, there is also an interesting selection of traditional costumes, a collection of elaborately-worked clay statuettes, an ex-voto collection, and a number of furniture items typical of an urban house, even if in a rural environment. An entire room is devoted to the traditional fishing industry.
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