Museo dei Vescovi (Palazzo Fracchiolla-Minerva)

Open since 2013 in an immaculately preserved nineteenth-century residence a few steps from the cathedral, the Museo dei Vescovi keeps the treasures of Canosa's church — medieval liturgical fans, pontifical gloves, ivories and manuscripts — inside the frescoed rooms of a noble palace still furnished as its builders left it.

Why it matters

The museum presents ecclesiastical objects within a preserved nineteenth-century residence. The Fondazione Archeologica Canosina, which manages visits, presents Palazzo Fracchiolla-Minerva as a nineteenth-century residence left intact in its furnishings and decorations, and describes the museum less as a diocesan collection than as a genuine art centre narrating Canosa from the sixth century BC to the nineteenth. Opened in November 2013 and dedicated to Monsignor Francesco Minerva, the prelate whose family owned the palace, it preserves both the memory of the long line of Canosa's bishops and the domestic world of the Apulian bourgeoisie that built it.

What to notice

The sacred treasury rewards slow looking. Among the documented pieces are pontifical gloves associated with Pope Paschal II, worked in silk and linen embroidered with gold thread and natural pearls in Byzantine manufacture; an ivory processional cross from an Arab-Sicilian workshop of the early twelfth century; and a medieval flabellum, the liturgical fan used in solemn celebrations, made of parchment and ebony. Manuscripts include an illuminated missal and a parchment recording the dedication of Canosa's church dated 7 September 1101. Then change registers: the palace's own rooms — a grand salon celebrated for its painted ceiling, period furnishings, an 1880 travelling carriage — speak of the Fracchiolla family and of the quality of local craftsmanship in the 1800s.

Context and history

The Fracchiolla family raised the palace in the early nineteenth century, and it passed in the twentieth century to Monsignor Francesco Minerva, whose donation was intended to create a museum for the city. The project was realised in 2013, with an inauguration recorded on 16 November of that year, gathering material from the cathedral of San Sabino and the Canosa territory across twelve exhibition rooms on two levels. The range is deliberately wide — sacred vestments, illuminated codices, inscribed stones, coins, archaeological finds, paintings and sculptures — reflecting the whole arc of the city's Christian and civil history. The frescoed entrance hall also hosts theatre and concerts.