The Museum is located in the 15th century abbatial palace, adjacent to the church of San Dalmazzo, the fulcrum of the Benedictine Abbey of San Dalmazzo da Pedona in the Middle Ages. Inaugurated in 2005, the museum is the goal of ten years of work in the parish church of San Dalmazzo.
In the museum, thanks to a rich illustrated documentation, we can observe the architectural evolutions that led to the foundation of the Abbey. From the entrance it is possible to see the complex stratification of wall structures from different eras: the apses of the Romanesque church (XI century) overlap with the remains of the building of cult of the Longobard age (VIII century). The museum houses a silver reliquary bust dating back to 1594 (a copy of the original kept in the church) and large reproductions of paintings with San Dalmazzo as a Roman soldier of the Theban legion, an evangelizer and a bishop, with the palm of martyrdom or the weapon that killed him by a blow to the head. Room I covers, with the help of graphic reconstructions based on archaeological relief, the different phases of the site’s long history: from the Roman necropolis to the first Christian church founded in the sixth century on the tomb attributed to the saint. In room II, attention is paid to archaeological finds from the Romanesque period in the church area. Room III contains the reconstruction of the large presbytery enclosure. The reconstructed design in the window hypothesizes its dimensions, highlighting its decorative richness, the result of the work of a refined workshop of artisans, who received the blocks of Bardiglio marble, quarried in Valdieri, then assembling the finished pieces in the church.