The City Museum is divided into three exhibition venues all located along the road axis coinciding with the urban crossing of the Via Francigena, which still today remains the backbone of the historic town center’s layout. At the southern entrance of the city is the detached site of the Julia de Jacopo Tower or Porta del Santo Sepolcro, which houses a considerable collection of archaic majolica, found in the former convent of Sant’Agostino. At the northernmost end of the town, near the Porta della Ripa leading towards Siena, is the second detached site inside the former convent of the Minor Conventual Friars, where numerous paintings belonging to the Franciscan convent’s art gallery are displayed. The main venue, located within the city, is housed in the rooms of the former Episcopal Palace built following the establishment of the new diocese of Acquapendente in 1649. Here you can admire works from the sacred art collection—paintings on canvas and panel, liturgical vestments, furnishings—in which the marble bust of Innocent X by the seventeenth-century sculptor Alessandro Algardi and the lunette with the dead Christ among angels (circa 1505), a work by Girolamo di Benvenuto, stand out. The main venue also hosts a valuable collection of ceramic artifacts resulting from extensive excavations focused on the Acquapendente area. The finds date from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, evidencing uninterrupted productive activity over centuries. On the second floor, you can visit a new museum section dedicated to the theme of the Via Francigena, developed along an exhibition route accompanied by a large model which, on a layout over twenty-six meters long, depicts the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome. The general topics addressed along the route explore, with the aid of videos and artifact exhibits, concepts and aspects of the civilizations through which the road passed over the centuries, such as faith and pilgrimage, commerce, borders and communication, sieges and war, hospitality and folklore.
CITY MUSEUM – Episcopal Palace – via Roma no. 85 Acquapendente (VT) website: www.museoacquapendente.it email: museo.civ.dioc@comuneacquapendente.it phone: 0763 7309205 Cultural Office of the municipality of Acquapendente
Information about Acquapendente City Museum
Via Roma, 85
01021 Acquapendente (Viterbo)
0763730065 – 0763730246
museo.civ.dioc@comuneacquapendente.it
https://www.museoacquapendente.it
Source: MIBACT
