The Museum of Sacred Art of Orte – formerly the Diocesan Museum – arose thanks to a unique collaboration between the Italian Superintendency of the Arts and Bishop Massimiliani starting in the 1950’s. The idea of creating a civic museum arose 50 years earlier and was spearheaded by a group of citizens under the guidance of Giocondo Pasquinangeli, the Honorary Inspector of Fine Arts. They did not limit themselves to imagining a future museum dedicated to art and archaeology. Instead, they undertook concrete safeguarding measures, identifying, collecting and securing the cultural heritage across the territory. In collaboration with ecclesiastical authorities, they concentrated and exhibited the local area’s most valuable paintings in the cathedral. They therefore preserved works from Orte’s various churches, in addition to collecting ancient pieces which they collected at the Municipality’s Archaeological storage space in the ex-monastery of Sant’Antonio.
Pasquinangeli’s vision, as well as that of the local Archaeological Committee, was happily though only partially fulfilled in 1967 through the creation of Lazio’s first Diocesan Museum. The paintings which had already been collected in the cathedral were placed in the former church of San Silvestro, while the stone works had a more troubled course which was temporarily alleviated by the creation of the municipality’s first Civic Museum in 2003.
The collection of sacred art was expanded in the 1970’s under the guidance of Father Delfo Gioacchini who increased the collection with some works from neighboring centers. In 2004, a number of paintings deposited in the Bishop’s Palace of Orte underwent restoration. This initiative allowed for the building to be transformed into a separate section of the museum, notably increasing both the collection and the exhibition space.

The collection of sacred art is divided between the two sites in a chronological way. In San Silvestro are exhibited mainly works made between the eighth and sixteenth century: mosaics, gold background tables, stone and wooden sculptures, goldsmiths, and liturgical vestments, including masterpieces documented or attributed to artists such as Vannuccio di Viva, Taddeo di Bartolo, Piermatteo d’Amelia, Pastura, Bastianino and Francesco da Castello (Frans van de Kasteele). In the Episcopalian Building instead they are admired above all cloths of the centuries XVI-XX, but also vestments and material stone altomedievale. Among this last group of paintings, we find works by Cesare Nebbia, Filippo Lauri, Pietro Nelli and Domenico Masucci.
This artistic production embraces a wide geographic area, pivoted between the Alto Lazio and southern Umbria, with frequent contributions from Rome, Siena, Spoleto, Abruzzo, and even Ferrara.