The story
On the lower floors of the old bishop's palace beside Cuenca's cathedral, the diocese shows art gathered from the cathedral and from churches across the province. The rooms were laid out by Gustavo Torner, the Cuenca painter who also helped found the city's museum of abstract art in the Hanging Houses, and his spare installation gives altarpieces, Flemish tapestries, carpets and church silver plenty of room.
The two paintings most visitors come for are by El Greco, the Cretan-born painter who settled in Toledo. One of them is an Agony in the Garden, Christ praying on the Mount of Olives while his disciples sleep. A few rooms away is one of the museum's rarest objects, a small Byzantine diptych from the 14th century, an icon and reliquary linked to the Despots of Epirus, rulers of a Byzantine Greek principality centred on what is now north-western Greece.
