Peregrinatio Fidei

Peregrinatio Fidei is a sacred-art museum housed in a former church at the southern edge of Mandas. Its collection brings together liturgical objects from the parish of San Giacomo Apostolo and rural churches in the surrounding area, including polychrome statues, sacred furnishings and silverwork.

Why it matters

The museum preserves the material culture of worship across Mandas and its countryside. Its name evokes the town’s connection with the cult of Saint James and the wider pilgrimage tradition. The collection offers a view of the objects and images that shaped religious life in the region from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

What to notice

The former church has a single nave with a wooden roof, three round arches, a gabled façade and stone buttresses. Among the museum’s works are polychrome statues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including figures of Saint Louis IX, Saint Isidore, Saint Efisio and Saint Vittoria, as well as a carved and painted sleeping Virgin beneath a canopy. Silver pieces by the Genoese silversmith Luigi Montaldo are also represented. The adjacent Franciscan complex includes a cloister with painted scenes and Stations of the Cross.

Context and history

The church was originally dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary and later became known as San Cristoforo. It was associated with the confraternities of the Rosary and the Virgin of Itria. After restoration, the deconsecrated church reopened as the Peregrinatio Fidei on 6 January 2007, preserving sacred objects from the parish and rural churches of the territory.