Modena Cathedral Museums

The Museums of the Cathedral , located within the protected area of the Unesco Site of Modena and divided into two collections, complete the visit to the Cathedral allowing you to fully understand its history and events. The original nucleus of the Lapidary Museum is composed from the sculptural finds unearthed during the restoration of the cathedral at the end of the 19th century. The collection includes sculptures and reliefs from the Roman era, mainly used as re-used material for the construction of the Cathedral, fragments relating to previous early medieval cathedrals, finds from the Romanesque period - including the famous series of Metopes - ancient, medieval and modern inscriptions. The Cathedral Museum exhibits a precious artistic-liturgical apparatus dating from the Romanesque era to the 19th century, including furnishings, sculptures, ancient reliquaries, tapestries, paintings and codices. Among the oldest works, forming part of the Cathedral Treasury, are the precious altarpiece of San Geminiano (11th-12th century), the Evangelistary made in the scriptorium of Nonantola (late 11th - early 12th century) and characterized by a refined binding in silver and ivory, the Relatio, a text from the 12th century reporting the chronicle of the construction of the cathedral and the Stauroteca with gold binding from the 9th century, probably from Constantinople.