CASTELFIDARDO: Accordion-loving Urkel's dream town

IT'S ONLY TWO EUROS.

Am I really willing to take the time and waste the cost of two glasses of wine to tour a museum devoted to accordions?

When or where else will I ever have the opportunity to go to an accordion museum, let alone think about such an instrument for longer than 5 seconds? My internal debate comes to a breaking point as the man at the front desk stares at me expectantly.

I splurge.

My skills communicating with Italians are reliant on hand gestures and English heavily laced with Italian accents I’ve picked up from Olive Garden commercials and spaghetti eating cartoon characters. My request for an entry ticket is answered with an equally difficult to decipher response from the man at the front desk. He guides me to a flat screen TV and assures me that a film will begin with English subtitles.

It is a short film with enough retainable facts that could start a couple of interesting conversations or at least impress some lonely Berkeley college musician cornered at a bar, such as fact that it takes over three months to create an accordion with over 15,000 pieces. As I watch the delicate, time consuming tuning process done by filing fractions of a millimeter off each individual reed, I can understand how the accordion came close to extinction due to the electronic music boom of the 20th century.

Once the film ends after about a half hour I walk around to look at the glass cases displaying various models of accordions dating from present day back to the late 1800’s. It is said that the first accordion created in Italy was in the town of Castelfidardo in 1863. A separate room is entirely devoted to paintings of accordions and accordion knick-knacks from glass figurines to a random bag of accordion shaped pasta.

Just as I am feeling sorry for the compiler of such obscure objects the sound of a live accordion fills the museum. I walk into the back room and see the man who gave me my ticket smiling and swaying as he plays a piece that reminds me of Lady and the Tramp.

An Italian family with three kids surrounds him taking pictures and clapping along. When he finishes, we all shout, “Bravo.”

At two euro, the live performance was a good deal.

- Philly Petronis