The Bobbio Cathedral Museum was opened in 2014, on the occasion of the millennium of the founding of the Diocese of Bobbio. It is housed on the main floor of the former bishop’s palace and in the Cathedral dedicated to St. Mary of the Assumption.
The halls
To welcome the visitors there is a large map showing all of the possessions of the Diocese and the names of the existing parishes. There are also several showcases displaying liturgical vestments and items once belonging to the last bishop of the Bobbio diocese: Monsignor Pietro Zuccarino (1953-1973).
The bishops’ hall is splendid and contains a vast cycle of frescoes, painted between 1724 and 1725 by Francesco Porro. In the next vast room, once the throne room, gold objects, liturgical furnishings and vestments from the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta are on display. The bishops’ hall is splendid and contains a vast cycle of frescoes, painted between 1724 and 1725 by Francesco Porro. In the next vast room, once the throne room, gold objects, liturgical furnishings and vestments from the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta are on display. Another fresco by Francesco Porro depicting the Adoration of the Magi, dated the first quarter of the 18th century, dominates the upper floor entrance.
This is where the rooms carved out above the vaults of the cathedral’s south aisle begin.
On the left, inside the lower bell tower facing Cathedral Square, there is a small archive with early 18th-century wooden furnishings. On the right there is the Bishop’s Chapel, adorned with Domenico Buonviso’s valuable Resurrection painting from 1624.
The last rooms are dedicated to furnishings and paintings from local parishes, including a Jesus in the Garden of Getzemani by the school of Jacopo da Bassano and the Martyrdom of a Saint attributed to Giulio Cesare Procaccini.
Of great interest is the ex-voto painting commissioned by the archpriest of Coli G. Battista Della Chiesa in 1696, in which there is evidence that even at the beginning of the 18th century the Ponte Gobbo had only seven arches. The last two rooms are dedicated to S. Antonio Maria Gianelli, bishop of Bobbio between 1838 and 1846 and co-patron of the Borgo together with S. Colombano.
Here the view from a small window onto the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in the Cathedral is very impressive.
