Museo Nazionale delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari

Roma · EUR · State museum of popular traditions

The national museum of Italian folk arts and traditions, housed in a monumental rationalist building on Piazza Guglielmo Marconi in Rome’s EUR district, now part of the Museo delle Civiltà.

At a glance

The building stands on the north side of Piazza Guglielmo Marconi, opposite the Palazzo delle Scienze. It holds the state’s principal collection of Italian ethnographic material, from agricultural tools to festive masks and presepi, assembled from the early twentieth century onwards.

Key facts

Where: Piazza Guglielmo Marconi, 8, Roma
What: Museum
When: 1956 (opening of this seat)
GPS: 41.8323, 12.4717 · Open in Google Maps

History

The origins of the collection reach back to the Museo di Etnografia Italiana founded in Florence in 1906 by Lamberto Loria. For the 1911 Esposizione Internazionale, held in Rome to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Italian unification, Loria organised a Mostra Etnografica. The collection shown there had grown to include ethnographic items from the various regions of Italy. After Loria’s death in 1913 and the interruption of the First World War, the Museo Nazionale delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari was formally instituted in 1956, when it opened in its present EUR building, designed by the architects Castellazzi, Morresi and Vitellozzi. In 2016 the museum was merged into the newly created MuCiv – Museo delle Civiltà.

What you see

The photograph shows a long, symmetrical travertine-clad block with a raised portico of rectangular pillars running across the main front. A wide flight of steps leads up to the entrance, and a large inscription in capital letters, MUSEO NAZIONALE DELLE ARTI E TRADIZIONI POPOLARI, runs above the colonnade. A tree-lined lawn and a paved open space separate the building from Piazza Guglielmo Marconi.

Do you know more about this place?

If you know a date, a name, a document, a plaque or a photograph that tells its story, write to Sofia at [email protected] or through the contact page. What arrives with a source goes into this page, with your name as the contributor.

Nearby

Museo Nazionale dell’Alto Medioevo, Rome — medieval collections in the same museum complex
Le Professioni e le Arti by Fortunato Depero, Viale della Civiltà Romana, EUR, R — mosaic on the nearby propylaeum
Palazzo dei Congressi — EUR by Adalberto Libera — rationalist congress hall
Marconi Obelisk — modern obelisk dedicated to Guglielmo Marconi

Sources

MUCIV-Museo delle Civiltà, Arti e tradizioni popolari: history of the collection, Loria’s role, and the museum’s thematic layout
Turismo Roma, MuCiv – Museo delle Civiltà: institutional merger in 2016, building details, the Palazzo delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari
Memorie di Paese, Roma. Museo delle Civiltà – Museo delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari “Lamberto Loria”: opening in 1956, architects Castellazzi, Morresi and Vitellozzi, Paolo Toschi’s display
Stefano Vigolo, photographs and notes to the editorial staff (2026): identification of the subject. Not a published source.

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Travel tips from CHO

Go on the first Sunday of the month

State museums, archaeological parks and monuments across Italy open free of charge on the first Sunday of every month. It covers state-run sites only — civic and private museums set their own prices — and there is nothing to claim: you simply walk in.

The ministry’s free days →

In September, the doors that are usually shut open

For one long weekend every September, some fifty European countries run the European Heritage Days together: palaces, workshops, archives and private houses that are closed the rest of the year let visitors in, almost always for nothing. Italy sets its own dates, and they are published a few weeks ahead.

Dates, country by country →

Arrive already connected

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