Museo di San Caprasio

Every weekday you have the opportunity to discover the treasures of artistic, historical and spiritual offering the Abbey of St. Caprasio with its museum. For guided tours on Saturdays and Sundays are the best days to visit us. From May 1 and throughout the summer the Museum will always find a volunteer at your disposal at the following times:

Saturday from 15.00 to 19.00

Sunday 9.00 to 12.30

Sunday from 15.00 to 19.00


VISITS TO RESERVE FOR INFORMATION AND FOR ANY OTHER TYPE OF REQUEST MAIL ADDRESS: museo@sancaprasio.it
OR CALL U.S. AT   0187-420148

Aulla

Aulla is one of the oldest place of hospitality and prayer raised in the Via Francigena : when between 990 and 994 centuries Sigerico, the Canterbury archbishop, arrived in Aulla. His abbey already contained the Saint Caprasio relics which came from Provence  between 885 and 896   centuries by Adalberto II of Tuscany. From  2001  excavations and restorations concerned the Church and its pertinences, seriously damaged by bombing that between 1943 and 1945 destroyed the old village of Aulla. With interventions realized after the 2010 inundation which flooded under more than one meter of water and mud the church, the cloister and museum, today it is possible to collect the extraordinary marks of art, faith and hospitality of a medieval Benedictine abbey.

Saint Caprasio abbey church

The Church dates back to the year one thousand when in all Europe churches had been restored and big cathedrals raised: in that big renovation period also this abbey monks enlarged their Church.  The church’s apse and façade that just a century before, on 27th May 884, had been built by Adalberto I of Tuscany,  were battered down and rebuilt extending the internal space of the naves. The IX century façade remains can be seen below the immersion font which has a circular shape with steps to enter the basin, whose the grinded pot bottom is conserved. The font dates back to the end of XI century and the first half of XII century, when the monastery Church became a parish in the service of a wide land.  Continuing along the right nave  you can see the trucks of the lateral entry big portal which outside had two big capitals: the reassuring eagle depiction one , symbol of Our Saviour and the other one with a demonic face similar to the depicted one over the Fidenza Cathedral, with plant patterns and a wild animal depiction. At the entry of the church two capitals warned the sinner, but reminded also that from the bad the good can rise and that from the sin you can save.
At the height of the portal, the concrete floor portion indicates the base of a pillar battered down in 1951, it conserves as the other one in front of it important trucks of frescos with geometrical decorations , probably dated back to the XI century.
The high altar has been recomposed using marbles of the seventeenth-century altar erected in 1664 in order to conserve the relics of Saint Severo given by marquis Cosimo Centurione, at the time of great baroque interventions which involved the new marble and slate floor realization, the all families and communities grave renovation, the stuccoes decoration of apse restored in 2012. The altar conserves on two sides the coats of arms of the Geneva Centurion family, the crown is overcame by a bear which reminds their descent from Ursine of Rome: the chessboard band has been stone cut, in 1797 with Napoleonic occupation that rectified the end of feudalism in all Lunigiana. In the ambo three valuable caissons of XVII have been recovered. They depict the Virgin Mary of the Savona Mercy, the Virgin Mary of the rosary, Saint Michele Archangel.