Museo Diocesano dell'Arte Sacra

It is located in the historic center of the city, near the cathedral, in the oratory of Our Lady of the Rosary, which housed the suppressed brotherhood founded in 1568 in the church of San Francesco. The museum, which opened June 30, 2000, preserved the liturgical treasure of the Alghero Cathedral and other historic churches of the city. The museum collection is divided into six sections: silverware, paintings, wooden sculptures, woodwork, stone and bronze. Silver: singular importance is the reliquary of the True Cross, precious work of Catalan extraction, forged by an unknown silversmith from Alghero, in 1500. Woodwork: the section includes a large tabernacle baroque carved wood, from the church of St. John the Baptist, a typical example of austere cell of the Capuchin Order. Wooden sculptures: there are housed in this section several statues of saints and the Virgin, evidencing the cults and the devotions which, over the centuries, have nourished the faith of the people of Alghero. The collection of bronzes includes two bells, one of which coming from the bell tower of the cathedral. The museum collection includes paintings dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. To note the predella of the altarpiece of the Annunciation, from the Church of Hope, in the countryside of Alghero and attributed to a painter of Catalan education active in the early years of the sixteenth century. Remarkable is the cycle of paintings attributed to a painter from Genova of the mid-seventeenth century, who has derived from Rubens scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin.