Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare

Beside Vercelli's cathedral, in the archbishop's own palace, a museum guards the movables of the oldest diocese in Piedmont: goldwork, vestments, reliquaries — and the manuscript world of the Chapter Archive, home to the late-tenth-century Vercelli Book, one of the foundational codices of English poetry. It is a small museum with an outsized collection.

Why it matters

Most Italian treasuries show you objects; this one also shows you texts, and texts of world importance. The Fondazione Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare preserves the artistic, book and archival heritage of the Cathedral Chapter and the Archdiocese of Vercelli, identified as the oldest diocese in Piedmont. The museum section and pinacoteca display sacred goldsmith work and liturgical furnishings across many centuries, while the adjoining Biblioteca e Archivio Capitolare preserves the manuscript and documentary memory of the cathedral chapter. Among its manuscripts is the Vercelli Book, a parchment codex written in Old English in a south-east English scriptorium at the end of the tenth century. It preserves a substantial body of surviving Old English poetry.

What to notice

The treasury's goldwork spans the seventh to seventeenth centuries and includes reliquaries, liturgical furnishings and pieces connected with the restoration of the cathedral's Ottonian Crucifix. A full-scale anastatic copy of the Vercelli Book reproduces the Anglo-Saxon script; the original remains in the Chapter Archive. The "Sale del Papa" (Pope's Rooms) contain textiles and paintings linked to John Paul II's visit to Vercelli in 1998. Note the setting as well — the museum occupies the Palazzo Arcivescovile beside the cathedral, so the visit reads as an extension of the cathedral itself, from throne room to sacristy cupboards.

Context and history

The museum is a young institution with an old inheritance. It was established by a foundation whose founding members include the Archdiocese of Vercelli and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Vercelli, with support from the Compagnia di San Paolo, CEI and Fondazione CRT; scholarly collaborations extend to the Università del Piemonte Orientale and to the universities of Göttingen and Rochester — the latter reflecting the international fascination with the Vercelli Book among Anglo-Saxonists. The Chapter Archive it shelters is the institutional memory of a cathedral community dating back to the fourth-century episcopate of Eusebius, and the codices, parchments and documents it contains have made Vercelli a fixed point in medieval studies. The foundation brings together the museum, pinacoteca, Chapter Library and Archive in a single institution devoted to the cathedral's artistic and documentary heritage.