Section 4 - Viticulture Room - Haymaking - Wheat Processing - Craftsmen's Workshops

Artificial intelligence, digitisation, new jobs. The world, over the centuries, has become more virtual. But there are some trades that have changed little: the agricultural trades, which are linked to the course of the seasons and Nature, and crafts, which require care and manual skill.We are still in the 16th-century Stables of the Palace. The tools on display in this room were used for the most common agricultural and craft activities in the Toirano valley and Liguria. As you enter, on the right, firstly you notice the tools used in the vineyard:  sprayers for spraying verdigris on the leaves to ward off pests, dating back to the 1920s -1930s, and a wood and leather machine for sulphur, patented - and award-winning! - in 1906. Now look on the opposite wall at the faithful reconstruction of a small 19th-century wine cellar: you can see the wine press, some "bigonci" - or wooden buckets - and containers for storing wine, such as chestnut barrels and blown-glass bottles. And where there’s wine, there is always bread! The room also introduces you to the tools used for harvesting, the ‘correggiati’ used to thresh the ears of wheat, and then to the scythes - or 'mesuire' in Touran dialect- used to cut the grass. Before leaving the room, let’s imagine two craftsmen working at their counters. You can see a complete carpenter's workshop, with a counter dating to 1890, and the workshop of a blacksmith, using the bellows, which are early 19th century. Can you picture him blowing the bellows to ignite the wood and coal in the forge?