Diocesan museum

The archaelogical excavations made for the 2000 Jubilee on the Cathedral square and at the Bishop's palace, produced exceptional results for the reconstruction of the urbanistic evolution of the North-East part of the city during the Romanesque and Middle age times. The find of a city walls segment and the foundations of a Middle age building, together with an early Christian mosaic recovered on the Cathedral square in 1955, allow to tell that the episcopal complex has always been on that area.

The discovering gives a good point of view to read many Middle age documents and explains how the Cathedral, contrary to what was thought, was in the beginning within the city walls and how it has always been the only one, arian or catholic, according to the different Bishops. The museum tour starts from the Roman city and the pagan traditions, with the help of explaining boards, graphic reconstructions, casts of epigraphs and important archaeological finds, it goes on through the recovered walls, highlighting the developing of the episcopal complex between early Christian and Middle age.

The exhibition boasts plastic pieces of the 12th and 13th centuries coming from the Cathedral and the Baptistery, a golden copper angel that originally stood on the Cathedral's cusp, a Christian oil-lamp from Carignano, the restored capitals and mosaics found in 1955 on the Cathedral square. Furthermore, a tactile path at entrance of the museum is available for blind people, with copies of famous works of art; you can also touch the baptismal font of the parish church of Vicofertile, the Zooforo of the Baptistery, the lamp with the Christian symbols of the II century AD and the funeral stele with the pagan and Christian symbols of the III century d. C.; finally, tactile cards are available.