Museo della Cattedrale

Founded in 1929 and moved to its current location in the former San Romano complex in 2000, the Museo della Cattedrale was born by the joint will of the Cathedral Chapter and the Municipality of Ferrara with the aim of collecting and enhancing the works that over the centuries have enriched the city’s main temple, seat of the episcopal chair.

The collection, made up of heterogeneous materials, brings together in a single location some of the rarest and most valuable evidence of the splendors of Renaissance Ferrara still present in the city that was the scene of their creation. Through the numerous works, visitors will be able to trace the history of the basilica founded around 1135 by rediscovering the creations of the famous Master of the Months, author of the tiles formerly placed in the grandiose Pilgrims’ Gate, now no longer extant, reaching as far as the rich eighteenth-century relic busts, still used today in the main liturgical celebrations of the Catholic Church. La beautiful series of 24 choral books decorated beginning in 1481 by Guglielmo Giraldi, Martino da Modena, and Jacopo Filippo Medici, and the majestic the grandiose tapestries with the Stories of Saints George and Maurelius woven between 1551-1553 by Johannes Karcher to a design by Garofalo and Camillo Filippi enable us to understand the extraordinary wealth enjoyed by the Cathedral of the Este city over the centuries. A religious and civic history at the same time, which in the extraordinary masterpieces of Jacopo della Quercia’s Madonna of the Pomegranate and the monumental organ doors depicting St. George and the Dragon and theAnnunciation of Cosmè Tura finds its main masterpieces. From the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century, Museo della Cattedrale preserves and conveys to citizens and visitors a communal history borne of centuries, which can still convey the centrality of this place of worship and its importance not only culturally.