Il Museo Cristiano – founded in 1946, but renovated and expanded under the care of the current archpriest of the Cathedral, Mons. Guido Genero – hosts two prestigious sections: the Lombard Heritage and the Cathedral Treasury. The first consists of two famous monuments included in the UNESCO nomination: the Altar of Ratchis (recently restored with the rediscovery of the original polychromes) and the Baptistery of Callisto.
The Cathedral Treasury presents in an absolutely unprecedented and coordinated form objects of goldsmithery and liturgical use, works of pictorial art (standing out are the “Noli me tangere” by Pordenone and two works by Veronese) and sculpture, manuscripts and codices that well testify to the absolute prestige of the millennia-old Christian history of the ancient capital.
Already recognized worldwide prestige also belongs to some of the precious sacred vestments on display, such as the sixteenth-century “Barbaro chasuble,” a highly refined product of Turkish weaving already exhibited at the MoMa in New York, in London, Paris and Venice; the fourteenth-century “Mitre of S. Paolino”; the seventeenth-century vestments for the traditional Mass of the Great Sword.
Cividale and Friuli – never marginal in history, culture, commerce and art – have been able to assimilate the best of a vast territory marked by the expressions of Latin, Germanic, Slavic cultures; to merge it into one and defend it with its stone walls. Now the goal – favored by the UNESCO nomination – is to create an integrated system that provides for agreements and institutional synergies at the regional, transregional, and international levels to rediscover, in a shared geocultural corridor, affinities and expressive commonalities.
Among the main synergies is certainly that between public institutions and religious institutions, holders of a substantial heritage of art – basilicas, frescoes, statues, illuminated manuscripts, refined goldsmith work – whose enhancement is also part of the cultural, social and religious promotion plans of the Church.
Information about the Christian Museum and Cathedral Treasury
Via Condotti, 1
33043 Cividale del Friuli (Udine)
0432730403
info@mucris.it
https://www.webdiocesi.chiesacattolica.it
from Wednesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 13:00 and from 15:00 to 18:00
4.00
Source: MIBACT
