Museo parrocchiale (Antagnod)

The cemetery chapel of Antagnod, a small late-fifteenth-century building beside the parish church of St Martin, houses the valley's collection of sacred art. Paintings and furnishings of Valle d'Ayas religious life are shown within the kind of building they were made for.

Why it matters

Regional heritage listings for the Champoluc/Ayas area record a Museum of Sacred Art in the fifteenth-century cemetery chapel of Antagnod at Sach Fendu, next to the church and cemetery. The parish displays the collection within the historic chapel, keeping the late-medieval architecture — the building type that served Antagnod before the 1852 church — within its original religious context. Together with the Baroque interior of San Martino, the museum forms part of the area's sacred-art heritage.

What to notice

• The cemetery chapel dates to the end of the fifteenth century, according to municipal and regional documentation, and is older than the parish church beside it.
• The museum stands at Sach Fendu beside the cemetery.
• The collection represents the liturgical and devotional objects of the valley's churches; a detailed sourced list of individual works was not available in the institutional records consulted.

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Context and history

Antagnod was the historic parish seat of the Valle d'Ayas, and its cemetery chapel served the community for generations before the arciprete Dandrès rebuilt the parish church of St Martin, consecrated in 1852. As the parish's older furnishings were superseded, the chapel beside the cemetery became the natural repository for them: the municipality's church documentation and the regional tourism database both state that the late-fifteenth-century cemetery chapel houses the museum of sacred art. The sources consulted do not specify the museum's founding date.