Museums and Heritage Sites

MUSEUM OF FOLKLORE

The Folklore Museum
The late medieval houses in Milite Bernardo Street (in the Citadel), now housing the Folklore Museum,
were probably built towards the end of the 15th or the beginning of the 16th century, the middle house
being the earliest, while the southern one seems to have been the last to be built. 
The architectural features are primarily Sicilian, possibly betraying Catalan influences
and maybe owing something to the style diffused by the Chiaramonte family in Sicily and
Southern Italy when they were Counts of Malta in the late 14th century. 
It seems probable that this style survived locally after it had become obsolete in Sicily.
 
Though not spectacular, their interiors are pleasant, while the facades with rounded doorways
and heavy voussoirs in the arches, double windows divided by a slender column, and the delicately
carved stonework make these houses unique in the Maltese islands as outstanding examples of late
medieval domestic architecture, though other examples can also be encountered in Mdina and Birgu
in Malta.
 
To ensure their preservation, these houses were acquired by the Government in 1981 and,
subsequently, restored.  Having been turned into a Folklore Museum in 1983,
they provide a wide range of exhibits, featuring both the rural and the domestic traditional
way of life of the Gozitans in years gone by. 
The Folklore Museum hosts a large collection of tools, costumes, furnishings and other
artefacts relating primarily to the agricultural aspect of the Maltese ethnography and
folklore.  Particular emphasis is placed on popular culture, traditions and trades.