Violin museum shows off musical heritage of Stradivari's birthplace

A Stradivari violin. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian For about 250 years, from the mid-16th century to the late 1700s, a little town on the banks of the river Po was a music-making capital. It was the birthplace not only of Antonio Stradivari, the still unsurpassed master luthier, but also, arguably, of the modern violin itself and of a series of craftsmen who made some of the most beautiful-sounding string instruments known to man.