A thousand years of history

Diocesan Museum and Baptistery

The Diocesan Museum of Albenga contains a rich collection of works of art that spans over a thousand years of history. Walking through its rooms you can admire early Christian finds, medieval paintings, sixteenth-century tapestries, up to the eighteenth-century statues. The gems of the collection are the three paintings: the "Martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria" by Guido Reni, the "Miracle of St. Verano" by Giovanni Lanfranco and the "St. John in the desert" an ancient copy by Caravaggio.

The museum is housed in the ancient Bishop's Palace, the visit allows you to cross the "room of the greenery" and the chapel of the ancient tower, made in the sixties of the fifteenth century by the bishop Napoleone Fieschi, once used as an apartment private of the Ingauni bishops.

Time and Tickets

Baptistery

The visit to the Museum is complete with the early Christian Baptistery, one of the main and well-known Byzantine monuments of northern Italy. The building, built in the 5th-6th century AD with an internal octagonal plan and external decagonal, it stands on the ancient level of the city, adjacent to the Cathedral of San Michele Arcangelo.

The interior is foreseen by the original baptismal font, where the celebration of the sacrament of Baptism by "immersion" took place. There are also baptisms from the late medieval and late sixteenth century. The vault of the central niche presents the magnificent polychrome mosaic, where the mysteries of the Christian faith are expressed through a rich symbolism with intense blue and yellow colors.

The original masonry vault was destroyed during an incorrect restoration in 1898. During the works some late-ancient choices for the lightening of the dome emerged; published the Baptistery is surmounted by a wooden structure of the early 1900s.

You enter the Baptistery with a guided tour by the staff of the Diocesan Museum.

The early Christian Baptistery