Violin Making in Cremona

Cremona has made stringed instruments since the sixteenth century, when the Amati family settled the shape and proportions that Stradivari and Guarneri later worked from, and the craft never stopped. The town still has dozens of workshops making instruments entirely by hand, and an international school of violin making that takes students from all over. The knowledge passes by apprenticeship rather than through manuals, which is the basis of its UNESCO listing. The Museo del Violino holds instruments from all three of the great workshops and, next door, an auditorium where one of them is taken out and played most days, which is the only way to hear what the collection actually is.

What you actually see

• The Museo del Violino - instruments from the Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri workshops.
• The daily audition - a museum instrument taken out and played in the auditorium.
• The workshops - dozens across the centre, most receiving by appointment.
• The violin making school - the international school that keeps the trade supplied.

When to go

Any time of year; this is indoor work in an indoor town. The auditions run most days to a fixed timetable and are worth planning the visit around. Workshops generally want a call ahead rather than a knock on the door. Cremona is flat, small and easily done from Milan and back in a day.

Honest expectations

The instruments in the museum sit behind glass in near-darkness and look like ordinary violins; without an audition the visit falls flat. The town is quiet to the point of dull once you leave the centre. Workshops are not shops and turning up unannounced usually gets you nowhere. A new instrument starts in the thousands.

Nearby

The Po runs south of the town; Mantua is about an hour east.