The Civic Tower Museum was created to tell the recent past, illustrating how the culture of arts and crafts in the Alto Livenza area was born and developed. It houses over 2000 pieces donated by citizens of Portobuffolè and also from other municipalities in the area, who wanted to contribute to creating this interesting collection.
The exhibited objects represent the activities that have been part of the daily life of the inhabitants of these areas over the last century. Among them are many tools used in agriculture. Everything needed for making wine is on display, from the grape press of the early 1900s to barrels and tanks. Notable are the wooden yokes, which were used for livestock engaged in fieldwork. Ladders of all sizes, sickles, shovels, and threshers that were used not long ago by adults and children to shell the fodder are also present. You can also admire the leaf cutter, a tool used to cut mulberry leaves for silk worm processing, a typical activity until a few decades ago. An interesting reconstruction of a cart made entirely of wood, recently restored but dating back to the first half of the 1900s, can also be found. It is one of the few means of transport that local farmers used, pulled by livestock for fieldwork or by horses to transport people.
A second series of tools is dedicated to the history of wood processing. Large carpenter's workbenches bear witness to the activities of carpenters who once worked in their artisan workshops using a bench equipped with vices and various tools such as saws of all sizes, routers, chisels, planes, and soraman (large planes used for wider surfaces). You can also see a portable workbench that was used for traveling when the craftsman moved to various families needing his service. Particularly valuable is the combination machine from 1938, one of the oldest wood processing machines used in the early factories in the area and employed for demonstration purposes until a few decades ago.
Other activities practiced mainly in the home were spinning and weaving, predominantly undertaken by women. The museum features still-functioning weaving machines. Although these machines belonged to local families, they were originally made in the Biella spinning mills and, once out of industrial use, were distributed to families to create more artisanal works. In this context, we find some fine sewing machines that women used to make clothing for the entire family at a time when poverty was the absolute ruler.
Within the path, there are also everyday objects such as matches used to start a fire with sulfur, various utensils, milk jugs, and kitchen tools typical of rural civilization. The entire collection of objects is arranged on different levels of the tower, which, in addition to the ground floor, has four other floors. One hundred and fourteen steps make up the access route to the building. The first flight of stairs is made of stone and leads to the entrance of the Fontego palace. From here, one encounters a series of wooden steps that lead to the entrance door of the tower. The internal floors of the tower are also connected by wooden steps.
It is worth noting that upon reaching the top floor, one can admire a truly unique panorama. On one side, there is the large green expanse of the Pra’ de Gai, and on the other, the course of the Livenza River, which flowed under the Porta Friuli bridge until 1911. A charming landscape that can only be enjoyed from the top of the twenty-eight meters of the tower.
