The Ethnographic Museum was founded in 1975, on the initiative of Don Dušan Jakomin, to collect, preserve and exhibit documents and objects relating to the history and customs of the Servola district, and to make them available to scholars and all interested parties.
A typical pre-1945 Servolan kitchen has been rebuilt on the ground floor. It is dominated by the bread oven, with the various items necessary for bread making exhibited there.
The preparation of bread was not only one of the most popular or traditional customs but also the most beautiful and important feature of Servola, although very demanding. The baking of bread was undoubtedly the most common activity among the servants, and its fame even reached the court of Vienna.
The so-called pancogole, a craft handed down from generation to generation, were the bakers who baked the bread by hand at home and went to sell it every day on foot in the centre of Trieste to private and public premises. Italian historians wrote that the servants prepared Italian bread, which was white bread instead of black bread, commonly used at the time.
From the end of the eighteenth century until the Second World War, this, fishing and agriculture were the main productive activities in the village of Servola, which has now been absorbed by the city.
