The Italian Museum of Folklore Imaginary, inaugurated in 2019, was born thanks to the Documentation Center of the Oral Tradition in Piazza al Serchio.

The Documentation Center, coordinated for years by prof. Alberto Borghini of the Polytechnic of Turin, has collected and recorded thousands of unpublished stories of the Italian oral tradition (including fairy tales, legends and popular beliefs), in order to preserve their memory for future generations.

The mission of the Museum today is to continue this research, continuing to recover and preserve the precious cultural testimonies of the past to make them available through the internet and the multimedia devices present at the museum.

The heart of the museum is the Narration Room where the visitor can listen to stories and fairy tales, with the possibility of leaving a testimony of the territory of origin.

The visit continues in the weaving and loom room, which represents a metaphor for the plot of the story illustrated through some symbolic objects of ancient tradition, the loom and baskets. Just as in everyday life the threads are woven or the baskets are woven, so also in the stories the journey of the protagonists’ story unfolds.

A particular space is assigned to the tradition of "Maggio", a popular form of theater that is very widespread in Garfagnana and Versilia. The Museum's collection includes a considerable number of audiovisual recordings, scripts and costumes left as gifts by old popular actors called maggianti.