Nativity Scene Section
The Nativity Scene Museum in Gandino, opened on Christmas in 1988, occupies six rooms located on the first and second floor of a seventeenth-century building that housed the old elementary school. There are around 600 nativity scenes from over 60 different countries on display, as well as Nativity-themed paintings and various sacred furnishings. The collection is dedicated to St. John Paul II, whose precious zucchetto or skullcap is preserved in the museum, and who donated a Brazilian nativity scene. There are works by well-known Spanish, French and Italian artists and unknown African and Latin American sculptors. The materials vary greatly: from traditional wood, blown glass and ceramics, to ivory, bamboo, dried tropical fruit peelings and corn leaves.
Textiles Section
Opened in the 90s, it’s located in the same building as the Nativity Scene museum. It houses a collection of objects and equipment that are testimony to Valle Gandino’s economic history, which based its fortunes in the textile industry. It occupies some of the ground-rooms and part of the external portico where the bulkiest equipment is located, among which: - a teasel raising machine (used to produce the so-called "pannilana" for which Valle Gandino is famous) - a fulling mill (machine used to bind and compact woollen clothes) - a drying rack (partial) called "ciodera". In the rooms, on the other hand, smaller objects which were used during other stages of fabric processing are on display: a hand press, some scales, a jacquard loom (it worked with perforated cards that predetermined the design of the fabric) together with a tool for drilling and preparing the cards, a double fold machine (to fold the fabric), a hemming machine, a spinning wheel and some samples of the produced fabrics. There are also small-scale reconstructions of a dyeing and / or drying room, large infrastructures that have now disappeared.
Nativity Scene Section
The Nativity Scene Museum in Gandino, opened on Christmas in 1988, occupies six rooms located on the first and second floor of a seventeenth-century building that housed the old elementary school. There are around 600 nativity scenes from over 60 different countries on display, as well as Nativity-themed paintings and various sacred furnishings. The collection is dedicated to St. John Paul II, whose precious zucchetto or skullcap is preserved in the museum, and who donated a Brazilian nativity scene. There are works by well-known Spanish, French and Italian artists and unknown African and Latin American sculptors. The materials vary greatly: from traditional wood, blown glass and ceramics, to ivory, bamboo, dried tropical fruit peelings and corn leaves.
Textiles Section
Opened in the 90s, it’s located in the same building as the Nativity Scene museum. It houses a collection of objects and equipment that are testimony to Valle Gandino’s economic history, which based its fortunes in the textile industry. It occupies some of the ground-rooms and part of the external portico where the bulkiest equipment is located, among which: - a teasel raising machine (used to produce the so-called "pannilana" for which Valle Gandino is famous) - a fulling mill (machine used to bind and compact woollen clothes) - a drying rack (partial) called "ciodera". In the rooms, on the other hand, smaller objects which were used during other stages of fabric processing are on display: a hand press, some scales, a jacquard loom (it worked with perforated cards that predetermined the design of the fabric) together with a tool for drilling and preparing the cards, a double fold machine (to fold the fabric), a hemming machine, a spinning wheel and some samples of the produced fabrics. There are also small-scale reconstructions of a dyeing and / or drying room, large infrastructures that have now disappeared.
