About the Museum

We promote education from the standpoint of spiritual and creative development via the impressive artistic heritage of the Museum-Cathedral of La Seu d’Urgell.

About the Museum

The Diocesan Museum of Urgell was created in 1957 during the episcopate of Bishop Ramon Iglesias Navarri. It is the last diocesan collection to be formed in Catalonia.

It originated in a Sacred Art exhibition that was held in the Chapterhouse featuring the pieces from the Cathedral’s treasure and promoted by the Friends of La Salle—a group of alumni who in 1956 suggested to the Cathedral’s chapter the possibility of creating a museum.

This initial museum started with around 50 pieces from the Cathedral and the church of the Pietà, and its director was monsignor Pau Vidal. From then on, the collection continued to expand with new additions, like documents from the chapterhouse archive, the Beatus, the Bull of Pope Sylvester II and other items from the different parish churches in the diocese which arrived in the 1960s and 1970s through the Diocesan Heritage Committee.

New facilities were opened on 15 June 1969 after the church of the Pietà was refurbished to serve as a museum. This new space contributed its own works to the collection, like the Pietà altarpiece and the sculptures of the Dormition made by the sculptor Jeroni Xanxo.

In 1975, Bishop Joan Martí Alanis appointed monsignor Albert Vives as the director, and he remained at the helm until 1990. During the first few years it was operating, an inventory and a catalogue of the Museum were drawn up, which Msgr. Vives published in the diocesan magazine Urgellia, broken down by collections. In the 1980s, more renovations were undertaken, and on 4 June 1988, the new facilities of the Diocesan Museum of Urgell opened, with the enlargement of the permanent exhibition galleries in the former Deaconry building and the Fatima chapel. Significant works were added to the collection during this period, like the chalice and paten of Núria, the altarpiece of Sendes and the new presentation of the mural from the vault of Baltarga, and the triumphal arch of Aineto.