Museo Diocesano sezione di Bitonto "Mons. Aurelio Marena"

The Diocesan Museum's Bitonto section carries the name of Mons. Aurelio Marena, the city's last bishop, who began gathering its scattered sacred art. Twelve centuries of painting, sculpture, silver and vestments now hang in a former Franciscan convent beside the church of San Francesco della Scarpa.

Why it matters

When Bitonto ceased to be a bishopric in its own right, its churches risked losing the objects that explained them. The section exists because the diocese chose otherwise: it is the institutional answer to the question of what happens to a city's liturgical heritage when the administrative map changes. Paintings, fresco fragments, sculptures, goldsmith work, vestments, furniture and carved stone, spanning the twelfth to the nineteenth century, were brought together under one roof and one accountable institution, the Archidiocese of Bari-Bitonto. The displays trace a cross-section of Bitonto's religious life, from Byzantine-age capitals to Bourbon-era embroidery.

What to notice

The displays are arranged by theological, pastoral, territorial and liturgical themes rather than chronologically. The story still moves recognisably forward: fragments from the city's oldest ecclesiastical buildings, including imported capitals and a painted table, evoke the Byzantine period; the antependium of a basilical altar stands for the Romanesque centuries; and the sixteenth and seventeenth rooms coincide with Bitonto's rise as a Universitas and the impetus of the Catholic Reformation, when local studios led by Carlo Rosa, alongside Nicola Gliri, filled altars for noble and clerical patrons. The panel of Saint Francis, presented as a unicum for the history of Franciscanism in southern Italy, anchors the medieval group. In the treasury rooms, silversmiths' punches identify Neapolitan workshops from the Angevin to the Bourbon age, embroideries point to the Opificio di San Leucio, and the fine needlework of the city's Benedictine nuns reminds you that much of this was made metres from where it now stands.

Context and history

Monsignor Aurelio Marena, the last bishop of Bitonto, started the collection and its conservation; after the 1986 union of the sees of Bari and Bitonto, archbishops Mariano Magrassi and Francesco Cacucci extended the project to the whole archdiocese, and a decree of 1997 formally joined the two museum institutions into a single Diocesan Museum with two sections, in Bari and in Bitonto. A restoration campaign launched from 2005, supported by European funds, the Regione Puglia, Arcus S.p.a., the archdiocese, the Comune di Bitonto and the state superintendencies, prepared both the objects and their setting. The section has changed address within the city: the display first opened beside the co-cathedral on Via Vescovado and moved in 2015 to its current home, the former convent of the Friars Minor Conventual, which later served as the episcopal seminary, next to San Francesco della Scarpa. The route's final word belongs to the diocese's written memory: pontifical bulls, liturgical books, account registers and records of religious profession, all on parchment and paper.