Ethnographic Museum of Istria

The Ethnographic Museum of Istria – Museo Etnografico dell’Istria in Pazin situated in Pazin Castle, a medieval fortress overlooking Pazin Cave, is a regional institution whose activities include collecting, preserving, documenting, interpreting and presenting the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the Istrian peninsula. The museum preserves ethnographic materials with holdings comprising 8,000 objects: textiles, agricultural tools, and everyday life objects in the Istrian village from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (pottery, carpentry, blacksmith products, as well as examples of traditional handcrafts). There is also a large collection of souvenirs, traditional musical instruments, postcards and greeting cards. The ground floor of the Castle houses a carpentry and blacksmith workshop, and the second floor features a new permanent exhibition, which, according to Ivona Orlić, director of the Ethnographic Museum of Istria – Museo Etnografico dell’Istria, dynamically presents Istria from tradition to modernity through several typical characters. They are a winemaker from Momjan, a fisherman from Fažana, a child from Motovun, a woman from Ćićarija, a miner, a woman from Vodnjan, an Istrian emigrant and a tourist worker. This part of the partially interactive exhibition ends with the topic of tourism and a critical view of this economic activity. In fact, the area of research of curator ethnologists is everyday life, i.e., clothing, economy, children’s games, music, food, beliefs, housing, as well as folklore, multicultural intertwining and contemporary cultural phenomena. The Museum has a Department for Museum Pedagogy and the Centre for the Intangible Culture of Istria (CENKI) – Centro per la Cultura Immateriale dell’Istria (CECII) headquartered in Pićan, which houses intangible culture – singing, playing, languages and local dialects, as well as all other skills like making traditional sweets, cooking, wine production, making various instruments, stone carving, etc.