Museo del Tesoro di San Lorenzo

Below the cathedral of San Lorenzo, Genoa's medieval crypt treasury contains the green-glass Sacro Catino bound to the Grail legend, crusade reliquaries and centuries of silverware, arranged by Franco Albini in a notable example of modern museum design.

Why it matters

Franco Albini's 1956 renovation of medieval underground spaces beneath the cathedral is a celebrated example of modern museography. Dark vaulted chambers, arches and stairways frame displays of goldsmith's work and silver.

The collection tells the story of a crusading port. Three groups structure it: relics and their containers, works tied to the veneration of Saint John the Baptist — patron of Genoa since 1327 — and liturgical furnishings made for or given to the cathedral. Everything here was carried, commissioned or donated by people who believed the city's fortune rode on what it kept sacred, and the museum preserves that ambition intact.

What to notice

The Sacro Catino is a hexagonal dish associated in tradition with the Holy Grail or the dish of Nicodemus. Chronicles attribute its arrival in Genoa in 1101 to Guglielmo Embriaco, after the capture of Caesarea. Long believed to be carved emerald, it was taken to Paris under Napoleon; analysis in 1806 identified it as glass. Returned in fragments, it was reassembled in 1951, and conservation work in 2017–2018 was followed by laboratory analyses that left its origins open. The collection also includes the Croce degli Zaccaria, a reliquary associated with the True Cross, the arca of the Baptist's ashes and baroque silver, including Schiaffino's statue of the Immacolata.

Context and history

The treasure grew with the cathedral. From the first crusade onward, Genoa's fleets returned with relics that asserted the city's standing beside Rome or Venice, and the Baptist's patronage from 1327 gave the collection its devotional centre. The museum form came much later: after the war, Albini transformed the crypt into exhibition spaces, and his 1956 arrangement remains a landmark in the history of the Treasury. The institution belongs to the Archdiocese of Genoa.