The abbey museum sits beside the church of San Dalmazzo and exists in order to read it. It was set up in November 2005 on the initiative of the parish priest of the day, don Giovanni Quaranta, and of Egle Micheletto of the archaeological heritage authority for Piedmont; the architectural design and the display are by Alessandro Scapolla. The parish runs it, and visitors are shown round by the volunteers of the Pedo Dalmatia cultural association.
What to see
You go in and at once meet a faithful copy of the saint's reliquary bust, in silver leaf: the original, of 1594, is kept in the upper chapel of the church. The first room tells how the abbey settlement grew over a Roman necropolis, and shows the images by which Saint Dalmatius has been portrayed over the centuries — as a warrior, a monk, a bishop — all of them pious inventions, since he never held any of those roles. At the centre stands a model conveying the size of the twelfth-century abbey church. The second room displays finds from the old town and from the church area: objects of daily use and grave goods, mostly of the second and third centuries, from the cremation tombs over which the abbey later rose.
Visiting
The third room is the room of stones, and it is the finest. There are fragments of Lombard and Romanesque date: pieces of a screen decorated with knotted circles, a small pillar, a capital, an architrave; then the remains of an imposing presbytery enclosure, some ten metres long, with three arched openings that let the faithful circulate around the saint's tomb; and lastly traces of the stucco decoration of the church built at the start of the twelfth century. From the museum you pass straight into the archaeological area under the church, and the two routes are designed as one.
Our editors' tip
Look for the funerary cippus in the second room. It commemorates an official of the customs posts of the Quadragesima Galliarum, the duty paid on all goods in transit, worth a fortieth of their value: concrete proof that here, before the saint and before the abbey, there stood a Roman customs house at the mouth of the passes. Beside it, a male portrait in very poor condition, probably of a benefactor who left the town a considerable sum and whose name we do not know.