Description
The Diocesan Museum of Palermo is housed in the Archbishop's Palace, next to the Cathedral: a museum of sacred art that gathers sculptures, paintings and furnishings from the city's churches, in chronological order, from the Norman era onward. You visit 27 rooms on three levels.
It was founded in 1927 at the wish of Cardinal Alessandro Lualdi, who wanted to save the works of disused churches. The first core was the sculptures that adorned the Cathedral before its great remodeling of 1781, which had remained piled up in the basements for a century and a half.
Among the rooms, the one dedicated to the Tribune of Antonello Gagini stands out: the Cathedral's great marble altar, dismantled in the remodeling, of which many fragments are seen here, with bas-reliefs such as the Flight into Egypt and the Episodes of the Passion.
Also don't miss the room of fifteenth-century sculpture, with Domenico Gagini and Francesco Laurana, and the gold-ground room, with the Madonna of the Pearl from 1171 and the Roll of the Deceased Confreres by Antonio Veneziano, from 1388.
On the piano nobile you visit the Bishops' Rooms, reception halls that were among the most sumptuous in Palermo. Parts remain of the cycle of frescoes of 1733-1734 by Guglielmo Borremans and the trompe-l'œil perspectives by Gaspare Fumagalli.
Here too is the room dedicated to Pietro Novelli, the great seventeenth-century Palermitan painter. The Green Room is dedicated to Palermo's patron saint, Saint Rosalia.
The palace was built in the mid-1400s at the wish of Archbishop Simone Beccadelli, in place of an older building behind the Cathedral. From the fifteenth century survive the elegant Flamboyant Gothic triple-light window and the Gothic-Catalan portal.
The museum has had an eventful life: reopened in 1952 with paintings saved from bombed churches, again in 1972, then in 2004. After the theft of the Caravaggio from the Oratory of San Lorenzo, in 1969, many works from closed churches had been brought here. The latest layout was inaugurated on July 10, 2021.
It was founded in 1927 at the wish of Cardinal Alessandro Lualdi, who wanted to save the works of disused churches. The first core was the sculptures that adorned the Cathedral before its great remodeling of 1781, which had remained piled up in the basements for a century and a half.
Among the rooms, the one dedicated to the Tribune of Antonello Gagini stands out: the Cathedral's great marble altar, dismantled in the remodeling, of which many fragments are seen here, with bas-reliefs such as the Flight into Egypt and the Episodes of the Passion.
Also don't miss the room of fifteenth-century sculpture, with Domenico Gagini and Francesco Laurana, and the gold-ground room, with the Madonna of the Pearl from 1171 and the Roll of the Deceased Confreres by Antonio Veneziano, from 1388.
On the piano nobile you visit the Bishops' Rooms, reception halls that were among the most sumptuous in Palermo. Parts remain of the cycle of frescoes of 1733-1734 by Guglielmo Borremans and the trompe-l'œil perspectives by Gaspare Fumagalli.
Here too is the room dedicated to Pietro Novelli, the great seventeenth-century Palermitan painter. The Green Room is dedicated to Palermo's patron saint, Saint Rosalia.
The palace was built in the mid-1400s at the wish of Archbishop Simone Beccadelli, in place of an older building behind the Cathedral. From the fifteenth century survive the elegant Flamboyant Gothic triple-light window and the Gothic-Catalan portal.
The museum has had an eventful life: reopened in 1952 with paintings saved from bombed churches, again in 1972, then in 2004. After the theft of the Caravaggio from the Oratory of San Lorenzo, in 1969, many works from closed churches had been brought here. The latest layout was inaugurated on July 10, 2021.