The diocesan museum is located in the historic center of Spoleto, very close to the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, inside the area occupied by the Archbishop’s Palace. The area now occupied by the bishop’s palace was once the residence of the Lombard dukes. A visit to the museum is recommended to admire the works from the many locations of the Spoleto-Norcia diocese gathered here for the protection of artistic heritage severely threatened by thefts, illicit sales, and conservation deterioration. Housed on the main floor of the palace in the wing called “the cardinal’s apartment,” the extensive collection of artworks, founded in 1976, recognized by critics and scholars as one of the most interesting in central Italy, boasts notable paintings dating from the 12th to the 18th century, including works by the Master of the Madonna Strauss, Filippino Lippi, Domenico Beccafumi, Cavalier d’Arpino, and Sebastiano Conca. Noteworthy is also the sculpture collection, presenting a rich variety of styles and materials from the 13th-century Romanesque wooden groups, the Renaissance Madonna with Child by the Master of the Madonna of Macereto, to the bronze Urban VIII by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Saint Philip Neri by Alessandro Algardi, true masterpieces of the Baroque era. There are also collections of liturgical vestments and precious metal furnishings. The museum visit is completed by the visit to the Basilica of Santa Eufemia, accessed through the cardinal’s chapel decorated with frescoes attributed to Andrea Sacchi dating to the early 17th century. One of the most remarkable Romanesque buildings in Umbria, the church, from the first half of the 11th century, belongs to the flourishing architectural phase of the Spoleto area that coincides with the period of greatest extension and power of the Diocese of Spoleto. Among the most famous works preserved in the museum is the bronze portrait of Urban VIII by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, donated by the pope himself to the city of Spoleto in 1644, not only in memory of the years spent in the city as bishop (from 1608 to 1617) but especially in remembrance of the total reconstruction of the cathedral’s interior commissioned by the pontiff and his cardinal nephew, Francesco Barberini, protector of Spoleto.
Information About Diocesan Museum and Basilica of Sant’Eufemia
Via Aurelio Saffi, 13
06049 Spoleto (Perugia)
0743 231022
museodiocesano@spoletonorcia.it
Source: MIBACT
