Museo dell'Abbazia di Grottaferrata

Inside the Renaissance palace of Grottaferrata's abbey, the state museum preserves archaeological finds gathered by the monks since 1875, medieval frescoes rescued from nearby churches and textiles such as a gold-threaded fourteenth-century omophorion.

Why it matters

The museum occupies part of the abbey complex and presents the history of the surrounding territory. Set up in the ground floor of the Palazzo del Commendatari, the Renaissance residence of the monastery's commendatory abbots, it was conceived as a museum of the local area and of the architectural complex, and it is now managed by the Direzione Regionale Musei Lazio of the Ministry of Culture. Its core is a collection the Basilian monks began assembling in 1875, later enlarged with material from the villas and catacombs around Grottaferrata and with private donations. The collection presents material from burial customs to medieval wall painting and liturgical textiles, documenting life on the lower slopes of the Alban hills.

What to notice

The archaeology rooms contain a stele showing a seated deceased youth, carved between the fifth and sixth centuries BC, one of the collection's best-known pieces. Around it are marble fragments, sarcophagi, coins and pottery, along with Roman portrait heads identified with figures such as Alexander the Great and Constantine. Islamic and Sicilian ceramics document trade across the medieval Mediterranean. Other notable groups include a set of frescoes detached from a nearby medieval church, and the textile collection, whose outstanding piece is an omophorion — the wide band worn by bishops — woven in silk and gold thread in the fourteenth century. The displays follow the history of the territory and of the abbey buildings.

Context and history

The collection's roots go back to 1875, when the Basilian monks began gathering antiquities from the abbey's own grounds; the holding then grew through finds made in the surrounding villas and in the Ad Decimum catacombs and through gifts from collectors. Housing it in the Palazzo del Commendatari was itself a statement: the building, raised for the abbey's commendatory abbots in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, also shelters the historical archive upstairs, while the monastery's codices were traditionally kept in the tower. The state's regional museums directorate manages the museum separately from the abbey church.