History

Francesco Peroni established his brewery in Vigevano, a small industrial city in the province of Pavia, in 1846. The region had a tradition of small-scale brewing dating to the medieval period, and Peroni's first operation produced beer primarily for local consumption, using German-style lager fermentation methods that were new to northern Italy at the time. The brewery grew steadily through the 1850s as industrialisation expanded the urban working class that would become its primary market.

In 1864, eighteen years after the founding, Peroni relocated its principal operation to Rome, recognising the capital's potential as a distribution hub for a unified Italy. The Rome brewery at San Lorenzo became the company's centre of gravity, and the Vigevano operation was eventually consolidated. The late nineteenth century brought rapid expansion: new bottling lines, rail distribution across the peninsula, and a marketing campaign that made the Peroni name visible in bars and restaurants from Turin to Palermo.

The twentieth century tested and transformed the brand. Two world wars interrupted production and supply chains; postwar reconstruction brought the introduction of Nastro Azzurro in 1963, a premium lager that became the company's international flagship and is now its most exported product. In 2003 Peroni was acquired by SABMiller (later absorbed by AB InBev), though production in Rome continued and the brand maintained its Italian positioning. The museum was founded in 2001, two years before the acquisition, as a deliberate act of institutional memory.