Cervi’s House

(Gattatico, Emilia-Romagna)

Credits: Casa Cervi

Where are we?

Whe are at Cervi’s House in Gattatico

Established to protect and promote the basic values of the Constitution and the civil and anti-Fascist memory of Alcide Cervi and his seven martyred sons.

The home of the seven Cervi brothers, shot during a Fascist reprisal in December 1943, immediately became a place of great symbolic value after Liberation, a symbol of the suffering endured by the population during German occupation. The Cervi family were sharecroppers who made fundamental choices both in terms of agricultural production and a strong and decisive anti-fascist effort. Their home, knows as Casa Cervi, was in fact a point of reference and concrete help for anti-fascists, draft dodgers and those opposed to the war.

In 2002, Casa Cervi became a Museum for the history of farmers’ movements, anti-fascism and the Resistance in the countryside. Established in the farmhouse where the family lived in 1934, today it is a place of memory, historical research, training, and education. The Museum’s new layout was inaugurated on 28^th December 2021. It is also home to the Alcide Cervi Institute, which gathers information and items which represent the values held by the figure of ‘papa Cervi’, and the Emilio Sereni Archive Library, named after one of the most well-regarded Italian scholars of the peasant world, and which also contains the National Historical Archive of Peasant Movements.

A portion of the farm annexed to the house is home to an agricultural-environmental Park, which maintains and recreates natural spaces within the farmland, promoting more environmentally friendly farming practices and contributing to the conservation of parts of the local agricultural landscape.

USEFUL INFORMATION

Facility or museum: yes

Website: www.istitutocervi.it

Geographic location: Gattatico (RE), Emilia-Romagna

Watching /reading tips

I sette fratelli Cervi

Movie

(Gianni Puccini, 1968)