The story
For nine years after the earthquakes of 2016, the art of Camerino's diocese was kept in storage. The shocks that autumn left the historic centre of this small university town in the hills of the Marche inside the largest red zone of the whole quake area, and the late-16th-century archbishop's palace, home to the diocesan museum since 1965, had to close. It reopened in October 2025 after a restoration costing about 26 million euros, with its rooms completely rearranged.
The museum carries the name of its founder, Giacomo Boccanera. Its best-known painting is by the Venetian Giambattista Tiepolo, an altarpiece of about 1740 in which the Virgin and Child appear to Saint Philip Neri, the 16th-century founder of the Oratorians. Around it hang an Annunciation by Luca Signorelli, the Renaissance master from Cortona, a Conversion of Saint Paul by Baciccio, the Genoese-born Baroque painter who worked in Rome, and a pair of saints, John the Baptist and Jerome, by the French Caravaggesque painter Valentin de Boulogne. Also back on view is the Madonna of Santa Maria in Via, a venerated image rescued from its damaged church in the town.
