Mdina Cathedral Museum
Baroque former seminary holding Dürer woodcuts, sacred silver and paintings from the cathedral chapter.
The museum stands on Archbishop's Square opposite the metropolitan cathedral, in a large baroque building put up in the 1730s as the diocesan seminary under Bishop Paul Alphéran de Bussan and usually attributed to Andrea Belli. The seminary moved out in the twentieth century and the cathedral chapter opened the building as a museum in 1969, arranging its collections through the former classrooms, chapel and courtyards.
Its best-known holding is a large group of prints by Albrecht Dürer, together with engravings after Rembrandt, Goya and Martin Schongauer, displayed in a dedicated graphics hall. Other rooms show silver and vestments used in the cathedral, panel and canvas paintings including works from the Apostolato series, a Neapolitan crib, wax sculptures, coins and the chapter's archive, which holds documents going back to the Norman period.
Highlights
- Dürer Hall with a major collection of the artist's woodcuts
- Engravings after Rembrandt, Goya and Schongauer
- Cathedral silver, vestments and the Apostolato paintings
- Neapolitan crib and the chapter's medieval archive
