Between the Domestic and the Sacred: Furniture as a Relic in Don Bosco’s House Museum

Abstract

This article examines the 19th-century furniture preserved in the house museum of Saint Giovanni Bosco, focusing on its symbolic, devotional, and museographic value. Through an interdisciplinary approach—combining art history, museology, and material culture studies—it analyzes a set of everyday objects that, beyond their practical function, acquire a sacred character through their association with the saint. In the absence of detailed documentation, the research relies on in situ analysis and historical photographic sources. Although modest in artistic quality, these furnishings serve as key testimonies of Don Bosco’s daily life and of the processes of patrimonialization that transformed private spaces into places of pilgrimage. The study emphasizes the need to reconsider domestic furniture as a vehicle of memory, identity, and devotional experience within religious museum settings.