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Abstract: The town museum is the expression of a local community. It has its origins in the eighteenth century and it developed in the nineteenth, to preserve and exhibit the works of art and the documents of the history of towns and cities that were to form part of the new national state with Italian Unification. The town museum suffered a gradual decline from the end of the nineteenth century until the Second World War. It regained its vitality from the 1970s with a new role, that of being the museum of the town which interpreted urban and social transformations in various ways. Today the issues of a multi-ethnic and global urban society present themselves. The town museum experiences changes and it presents itself primarily to the local population, becoming more a centre of interpretation of the town than an organisation for the preservation of collections. This article briefly analyses the situation of town museums and their possible transformation into present-day instruments for a renewed kind of museology, from a historical perspective and in relation to legislative and administrative reforms in the sector. This within a critical perspective in order to contribute to «creating» a new vision that is open to the future.