Museum of the Asturian People

The Museum of the Asturian People was created in 1968. It consists of an area of 30,000 square metres to which three buildings have been moved: the house of the Valdés family, from the 17th century; the house of the González de la Vega family (bagpipe museum) and the Asturias pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Seville (1992).

In the grounds there are granaries and granaries from the 18th and 19th centuries. There are also several bowling alleys for playing the different types of bowling that exist in Asturias, an exhibition of agricultural implements, a ground floor peasant house typical of central Asturias, and a pond that is a relic of the marshy landscape that dominated the mouth of the river Piles.

The aims of the museum are to conserve, display and disseminate material, graphic and oral testimonies that allow us to learn about traditional Asturian society and preserve its memory. The museum has an extensive collection of ethnographic materials, graphic documents (engravings, lithographs, drawings), and a sound library of Asturian music.

In the house of the González de la Vega family, a large house built in 1757 and originally from Serín (Gijón/Xixón) or Gaita Museum, there is a collection of bagpipes from North Africa, Eastern and Central Europe and especially from France, the United Kingdom and the Iberian Peninsula.

The house of the Valdés family houses a permanent exhibition entitled "Photography in Asturias, 1850-1965", which shows the evolution of photography and Asturian society in those years, as well as temporary exhibitions and a documentation centre of Asturian photography open to researchers, which currently has more than 200,000 images.

The Casa Campesina is a very common type of dwelling among the peasants of central Asturias. It consists of a kitchen, two rooms, a stable with a barn and a doorway. All the furniture, belongings and tools correspond to those of a dwelling from the second half of the 19th century.