Museo della Città

The museum occupies the former working quarters of Bobbio's monastery and presents the town's monastic history, manuscript tradition and natural-history collections.

Why it matters

The Comune bills it as an introduction to the history of the abbey and the city. The rooms were the working quarters of the monastery of San Colombano — refectory, kitchen, washroom and cellar — the domestic machinery of the community that turned a hill town on the Trebbia into a centre of learning.

What to notice

The museum's displays address Columbanus's journey from Ireland to Bobbio and the Lombard Italy in which the abbey operated. Reproductions of pages from fifteen codices written here between the ninth and twelfth centuries, whose originals are now in Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana, illustrate the scriptorium tradition. The collection includes a sixteenth-century fresco of Pope Gregory above the entrance portal, possibly by Bernardino Lanzani, and a Crucifixion from the second half of the fifteenth century showing San Colombano beside San Benedetto with his Rule. The cellars hold a minerals collection and photographs by Gino Macellari.

Context and history

The museum belongs to the abbey complex and complements the nearby Abbey Museum, whose collections include archaeology and major artworks. The codex reproductions summarise why Bobbio mattered: manuscripts made in its scriptorium now survive in collections far from the Trebbia.