Photo: Noce09 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Museo delle terre di confine

Municipal demo-ethnoanthropological museum of Sonnino in a historic palace, on the border between the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and on brigandage.

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Directions

About the museum

The Museo delle Terre di Confine is a municipal demo-ethnoanthropological museum devoted to the theme of the border, understood in a geographical and cultural sense. It opened on 26 July 2008 in a historic palace that belonged to the Mancini family; the architectural design is by Elio Falcone and Roberto Cellini, while the scientific and museographic curatorship is by Vito Lattanzi and Vincenzo Padiglione. The municipality of Sonnino conceived the museum, owns it and runs it.

Sonnino stands in the border area that, until Italian unification, separated the Papal States from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the museum tells its story through the events of the border and of brigandage, before and after unification. The collections date from the 19th century and also document local traditions, such as the procession of the torches of the Ascension.

The route is divided into ten thematic rooms, grouped into four sections: “Terra di confine perché?” (Why a border land?), “Patrimonio rappresentato / Territorio vissuto” (Represented heritage / Lived territory), “Personaggi di frontiera” (Border figures) and “Parole e immagini dell’altrove” (Words and images from elsewhere). Among the figures presented are the brigand Antonio Gasbarrone, the female brigand Maria Grazia Boni and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli; the last room imagines the future of Sonnino in 2049.