Onufri National Iconographic Museum
Icon collection inside the 1797 Church of the Dormition, high in the inhabited citadel of Berat.
The museum occupies the Church of the Dormition of St Mary, raised in 1797 on the foundations of a tenth-century building inside Berat Castle, a fortified quarter still lived in today and inscribed by UNESCO in 2008. The church keeps its carved and gilded iconostasis of 1807, attributed to woodcarvers of the Çetiri family, together with wall paintings and a women's gallery. Display cases were installed in the aisles and narthex when the collection opened in 1986.
About two hundred icons and liturgical objects dating from the fourteenth to the twentieth century are shown. The core is the work of Onufri, the sixteenth-century painter and archpriest of Elbasan whose intense red pigment is often called Onufri red, and of his son Nikolla. Later Berat and Korçë workshops are also represented, alongside chalices, crosses, embroidered vestments and manuscripts gathered from churches across the region.
Highlights
- Icons by Onufri, the leading Albanian painter of the sixteenth century
- Gilded and carved iconostasis of 1807 still in place
- Some 200 icons and liturgical objects from the 14th to 20th centuries
- Set inside the inhabited citadel of Berat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site
