The Civic Museum “Città di Cave” houses the Lorenzo Ferri Museum, inaugurated in 2012 and dedicated to the sculptor, painter, restorer and sindonologist Lorenzo Ferri (1902-1975).

The museum’s exhibition is organized in three main sections that retrace the most important stages of the artist’s life.

The building, an old branch of the Mattei Hospital, hosts a gallery of plaster cast pieces, highly representative of the different phases of the artist’s career. Among the most meaningful works are his rough sketches of Roman sculptures like the Trilussa and Giolitti statues, the Ecce Homo, the Cristo Alfa-Omega and Christ the Redeemer, the rilievo made for the bronze doors contest of the San Pietro Cathedral in Rome, and the door dedicated to the Virgin in Cave.

The underground rooms of the Palazzo Comunale (Municipal Building), former home of the Augustinians’ Monastery, display the sindonic section and the Presepe Monumentale (Monumental Nativity Scene) with the Nativity being made up of statues over 4 mt tall and sculpted between 1947 and 1948, after the artist won a contest held by the Padri Pallottini (a religious congregation) for the renovation of the Nativity scene in Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome. The sculpted groups represent the Epiphany with Mary and baby Jesus, Saint Joseph on the right side of the Virgin Mary and the Three Wise Men with their respective page boys, offering their gifts.

The sindonic section gathers his studies on the Holy Shroud, conducted in order to reconstruct the body and face of the Man of the Shroud.

Two whole new sections are being set up in the Civic Museum, the first dedicated to the cultivation of Tobacco, the Chestnut, and to Silkworm breeding and the second dedicated to the archeological collection.