The origins of the Museum date from 1978, when a Committee for safeguarding, conserving and promoting Colognora was instituted, to become the Chestnut Museum in 1985, following the acquisition of ethnographic material owned by the townspeople.

The Museum is housed in an old building; on the outside, it is completed by a "metato" (a small two-tiered structure on which chestnuts were dried) and a charcoal burner's post. The Museum is also the headquarters of the Institute for Research and Documentation on the Chestnut Tree.

The ethnographic collection is comprised of implements for harvesting chestnuts, arranged in 20 sections pertinent to the various stages of exploiting the chestnut woods: from clearing the underbrush to collecting the chestnuts, from hulling to drying, from grinding to preserving for alimentary use, and lastly the working of chestnut wood. The objects date from the middle of the 18th to the middle of the 20th century. In the basement are replicas of typical settings, such as a carpenter's shop and a chestnut mill.

One of the rooms displays objects and documents relevant to the history of the town, including a bell-tower clock from 1746 and electric material from the first half of the 20th century.