Photo: Auregann · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Museo del Santuario di San Vito

Small museum in the rooms around the Sanctuary of San Vito Martire, with silverware, vestments, ex-votos and terraces facing the Torre Tagliavento.

Opening hours unknown

Directions

About the museum

The Sanctuary of San Vito Martire probably began in the 14th century as a small chapel, built over older underground remains dating to the 4th–5th century. In 1485 indulgences granted by Pope Innocent VIII encouraged the enrichment of the church, and as the number of pilgrims grew the building was extended into a fortified church with lodgings, partly to protect the faithful from bandits. In 1526 Emperor Charles V made a donation to the complex; in 1998 the exterior was restored, and in 2002 works uncovered a rural baptistery.

The museum occupies the rooms around the church, which in the past housed a garrison and noble pilgrims. It holds statues, prints, paintings, devotional objects and contemporary works, with sacred silverware from the late 16th to the 21st century, historic liturgical vestments, and a section on the spread of the cult of San Vito in Sicily and Italy.

The route includes the Sala degli argenti (silverware room), with a 15th-century wooden statue of the Immaculate Conception from a chapel of the tuna fishery (tonnara), a silver monstrance of 1713 and a 16th-century stucco Ecce Homo; the Sala dei parati (vestments room), with a 17th-century green velvet chasuble; the Sala della devozione (devotion room), with ex-votos from the faithful; the scalone nobile (noble staircase), decorated with paintings; and the panoramic terraces that lead to the Torre Tagliavento.