Museum of rural culture

The Museum of rural culture, which is situated in the hamlet of San Marino (5 km far from Bentivoglio), is housed in the beautiful 19th-century Villa Smeraldi and surrounded by a large park of notable environmental and recreational value.

This ethnographic museum of national importance is unique of its kind: it reconstructs the history of the Bolognese Plain between the 19^th and the 20^th century through its crops, such as maize, wheat, rice and hemp.

Visitors can see not only a large number of agricultural machinery as well as objects and tools from everyday peasant life but also a reconstruction of different production cycles (hemp, wheat and milk) as well as rooms of a country house.

The museum hosts several temporary exhibitions allowing visitors to learn more about rural archaeology and local tradition and places a meeting hall at the disposal of public and private bodies. The museum also promotes a large number of didactic initiatives.

A new section is open from March 2013 inside the area dedicated to the farmers of the Bologna's plain area between the second half of 18^th century and the second half of 20^th century (Contadini della pianura bolognese): this exhibition is entitled "Artigiani di campagna" (Craftsmen from the country). It  illustrates the many crafts that animated the life of the local countryside and brings to life a world of trade and commerce which has now disappeared. There are the blacksmith, the miller, a basket-maker, but also the manufacturer of brooms.