01/04/2025 - 31/10/2025
Cairo Montenotte

Description

The Bormida Valley is a treasure which speaks of unique traditions, art, ancient trades, food and wine culture. We suggest discovering it by bike & train: the railway line as way of moving over longer distances and as a comfortable "metro" with bikes in tow to get to know the areas and the communities of this kaleidoscopic and amazing valley.

What have some of the masterpieces of Italian film such as Roma Città Aperta, La Ciociara or Totò a Colori, the first Italian film in colour, got in common?
Come with us and get to know the story of Ferrania.

Note

The history of Ferrania is a story full of twists and turns and intuitions:
The factory was established in 1915 as the expansion of an explosives and dynamite factory to tackle the demand during the First World War. At the end of the War, with the considerable stock of explosives and chemicals, as well as machinery, it was decided to reconvert production and produce nitrocellulose, which at a lower grade of nitration, and together with camphor as plasticiser, from explosive material becomes cinematographic film. The Ferrania brand became the Italian leader in the production of photosensitive material for cinema, photography, graphic arts and radiography. The company saw its maximum development after the Second World War thanks to the success of the first film in colour realised in 1947 in Europe, the Ferraniacolor. The strong partnership with Cinecittà began: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Lattuada, Steno, the biggest directors and their photography directors, entrusted themselves to the company which was able to compete with colossals such as Agfa and Kodak, with the new departments in continuous expansion and a real city developed around the company, with the residential village for the workers, the afterwork club, the recreational-sporting activities. In 1964, the company was purchased by the American multinational 3M, which invested heavily in research promoting the birth of new products and patents. In the 1980s, 3M chose to concentrate the activity of the factory on the photographic sector and it became world leader in medical imaging. In the following decades, with the advent of new digital technologies, the demand for photosensitive products fell drastically, eventually leading to the closure of Ferrania.


In the Museum you will retrace the industrial vicissitudes of the factory, but also the history of cinema, communications and the social history of the workers’ village of Ferrania. Before the popular itinerary to discover the factory sites, stop to enjoy a local specialty, the "tira" a De.Co product. According to tradition, its origin relates to the Napoleonic battle of Millesimo. But this is a story which you will only become acquainted with in the Bormida Valley.
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