Museo Diocesano di Ostuni

Beside Ostuni's cathedral, the Diocesan Museum occupies the former Bishop's Palace. Its collection includes treasury silver, medieval and Baroque paintings, illuminated books and carved stone. The museum opened in 2017.

Why it matters

A co-cathedral's treasures need a home, and Ostuni's found one on the ground floor of the ancient Palazzo dell'Episcopio. The municipal record describes a museum of sacred art, liturgical furnishings and historical documents; the museum's own presentation adds the provenance that gives it weight — works from the treasury of the cathedral's chapter, from the capitular archaeological collection, and from local churches and Benedictine monasteries. The result is a compact survey of a millennium of church life in one small city: metalwork of the local silver tradition, canvases and sculptures from diocesan churches, codices and documents telling the administrative history of a diocese created centuries ago. The collection preserves objects from the cathedral and records the history of the diocese.

What to notice

Four groups of objects deserve slow looking. First, the silver: reliquaries and liturgical furnishings in gold and silver that the municipal page ties to the local goldsmith tradition, the same craft culture that decorated the city's altars. Second, the pinacoteca — medieval and Baroque paintings and sculptures gathered from diocesan churches, including a Madonna del Rosario highlighted by the museum. Third, the codices and ex-voto books, the paper memory of the diocese, complemented by historical documents. Fourth, the archaeological fund of the chapter, stone works and ancient frescoes that remind you the palace's courtyard and lanes are themselves layered. Note the anatomical wax crucifix, an unusual devotional piece the museum lists in its collections, and the panels that explain each group in the rooms of the former episcopal residence.

Context and history

The palace beside the cathedral was the seat of the bishops of the "Città Bianca" — a diocese whose documented history runs from its medieval bishops through its suppression in 1818, its restoration in 1821 under the archbishops of Brindisi, to the full union of 30 September 1986 that made Ostuni a co-cathedral of the new Archdiocese of Brindisi-Ostuni. When that history produced a surplus of treasures and a reduced episcopal household, the logical solution was a diocesan museum in the old palace. It was inaugurated in August 2017, on the ground floor of the Palazzo dell'Episcopio at Piazzetta Beato Giovanni Paolo II, 28, and it presents itself as a research institution as much as a display — its own motto being that a museum without research is merely a warehouse of old objects. The museum is part of the Musei di Ostuni network, which also includes the civic collection and the archaeological park.