Museo Diocesano di Ugento

Beneath Ugento's cathedral, in underground rooms that served as burial places in the seventeenth century, the diocesan museum keeps the devotional treasury of one of southern Italy's oldest sees: silver chalices, parchment missals, paper-mache saints shaped by Salento craftsmen and the painted faces of long-dead bishops.

Why it matters

The museum occupies underground rooms beneath Ugento Cathedral that served as a burial place in the seventeenth century. Its collection of liturgical objects and devotional works reflects the history of a diocese documented since 1198.

What to notice

The collection includes silver chalices, parchment missals, saints made by Salento paper-mache artisans and portraits of the diocese's bishops. Vaults and niches recall the rooms' former funerary use.

Context and history

A document of Pope Innocent III dated 23 June 1198 names Ugento among the dioceses under the archdiocese of Otranto. The cathedral above the museum was rebuilt in the eighteenth century after the 1537 incursion. When the underground sepulchral spaces were recovered from their use as a burial place, they became the natural container for the diocese's dispersed treasury, and the museum now presents chalices, vestment-related objects, sculpture and episcopal portraits as a single narrative of worship in the lower Salento.