Museo Diocesano di Bobbio

Inaugurated in 2014 for the millenary of the diocese, the Museo Diocesano di Bobbio presents vestments, goldwork, frescoed halls and a painted ex-voto of the Ponte Gobbo in the bishop's palace beside the cathedral.

Why it matters

Created to mark the millenary of the diocese of Bobbio, founded in 1014, the museum conserves objects and records accumulated by the institution: the liturgical wardrobe of its last bishop, the cathedral's silver and goldwork, and the history of the bishops. It opened in 2014 in the Palazzo Vescovile, a building whose history spans from the eleventh to the eighteenth century and whose rooms adjoin the cathedral.

What to notice

The entrance hall is dedicated to Monsignor Pietro Zuccarino, the diocese's last bishop, and displays his mitre, stole and cope from Milan's Beato Angelico workshop alongside a map of the diocese's seventy-one parishes as they stood in 1968. The Salone dei Vescovi carries frescoes by Milanese quadratura painter Francesco Porro, painted in 1724–25, with medallion portraits of the bishops of Bobbio. The former throne room holds the cathedral's goldwork and liturgical silver; the bishop's chapel contains Domenico Bonvisino's 1624 Risurrezione altarpiece. Other works include a Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane from the school of Jacopo da Bassano and a Martyrdom of a Saint attributed to Giulio Cesare Procaccini. A 1696 ex-voto commissioned by the archpriest of Coli depicts the Ponte Gobbo with seven arches, documenting an earlier form of the bridge. The studiolo of Sant'Antonio Maria Gianelli, bishop from 1838 to 1846, forms part of the museum's collection.

Context and history

The diocese of Bobbio was united with Piacenza in 1989. The museum preserves its institutional history in the frescoed Salone dei Vescovi and the archive room's intact eighteenth-century wood furnishings.