The Pietro Piraino Museum of toys and waxes is housed in Bagheria. It collects antique toys and dolls and, alongside them, a series of wax sculptures.
What to see
The dolls and toys on display are made of various materials, such as porcelain, wax, papier-mâché, lenci felt, celluloid and wood, and date from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are also some small terracotta toys from the tomb of a girl of the second century BC and a toy pistol from the Nazi camp of Mauthausen. One section is devoted to dolls' houses, complete with tiny furnishings, to miniature furniture and accessories, to porcelain, kitchen utensils and little dresses. Some wooden toys are typical of Sicilian peasant life of the early twentieth century: the little cart, the small Pulcinellas, the pupi puppets, spinning tops and whistles.
The collection of automata presents rare mechanical toys made in the nineteenth century in France, Germany, Switzerland and Sicily. Among the mechanical games are a bellows harmonium, a barrel organ with hammers and bells, German disc musical boxes of the nineteenth century, magic lanterns and scientific toys; a large space is given to tin toys and to layouts with model trains. Wax sculptures by Sicilian and Neapolitan artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are also on display.
Visiting
In 1994 Pietro Piraino Papoff, with his daughters Laila and Lucilla, created the Association «Museo del Giocattolo Pietro Piraino», which deals with research, restoration, cataloguing and conservation of old toys and games; the museum has the patronage of Unicef and of the Ministry of Education. In 2002 it moved to Bagheria, to the main floor of Villa Aragona Cutò, on via Consolare, owned by the Comune. According to the museum's entry, in 2014 it passed to its permanent seat in Villa Certosa, restored for the purpose, with a book shop, café, multimedia room with frescoes by Velasco, library and garden; other sources still place it in Palazzo Cutò, so the location must be checked, together with hours and tickets.
Our editors' tip
The attached workshop restores antique toys, wax sculptures, nativity scenes and wooden statues, and also produces statues and compositions in wax with the old techniques of wax modelling. There nine of the twelve wax statues made in 1770 by the wax modeller Ferretti, now stolen, have been recreated; the other three were being remade.
