Museo delle Misse (Museo della Cattedrale di Lucca)

Beside Lucca’s Cathedral of San Martino, the Cathedral Museum preserves artworks and objects from the church’s history. Its galleries occupy a group of historic buildings: a thirteenth-century tower house, a sixteenth-century church and a main block of fourteenth-century origin.

Why it matters

Since 1992, the museum has brought the cathedral’s treasury into a chronological display. The collection includes sculpture, stonework, goldsmithing, textiles, chalices and paintings, showing how objects for worship changed across the centuries while remaining part of the cathedral’s life.

What to notice

The Volto Santo’s crown, made by Ambrogio Giannoni of Massa, was placed on the wooden crucifix in 1655 during a three-day ceremony. It is still used to dress the image for the feast of Santa Croce. Other highlights include the early-fifteenth-century Croce dei Pisani, five fourteenth-century illuminated choir books, a sixth-century ivory diptych carved in Constantinople, a Flemish casket and a Limoges reliquary.

Context and history

The museum’s collections trace the artistic and devotional life of Lucca’s cathedral. The Volto Santo, a monumental wooden crucifix long venerated at San Martino, remains central to the city’s annual celebrations and to the treasures gathered around it.