Żabbar Sanctuary Museum

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The entrance side of the museum right next to the Our Lady of Graces church
The small exhibition hall made of the panels of Alcantara

The Żabbar Sanctuary Museum is a church museum in Żabbar , Malta . It has the largest collection of marine exvoto paintings on the island .

The building

The architect Giuseppe Lia was responsible for the construction of this only Maltese museum, which is housed in a building specially built for the collection, and the rest of the design was carried out by the artist Ġużeppi Galea. The museum, which opened on September 5, 1954, was restored between 2000 and 2003 and the exhibition reorganized.

The cube-shaped building is built directly on the Church of Our Lady of Graces .

The exhibition takes up the largest part and is divided into two levels. The upper exhibition level rests on a steel structure that is freely located in the room without wall connections and is accessed by a curved staircase. In this way, higher exhibits can also be presented.

Collections

Exvoto

A large ship with a Maltese flag aground off Bicieri is secured by three order galleys. Votive tablet in Żabbar.

One collection consists of ex-voto paintings from the 17th to 19th centuries. Churches like those in Birkirkara , Mellieħa , Qrendi , Senglea , Marsaskala have a larger inventory of ex-voto objects, but only Żabbar has the largest collection with 85 purely maritime depictions on this subject. The oldest Maltese exvoto dates back to 1631. The collection forms its own exhibition area in a separate room. This building also houses the depot with the reserve collection and the museum archive.

Back of one of the panels of the Alcantara in Żabbar with lettering

Furthermore, exhibits from the area of ​​Christian customs such as processional decorations and fireworks (so-called " petards ") as well as church furnishings such as altars, works of church painting and liturgical objects are presented . A depiction with "Our Lady on Mount Carmel" by Mattia Preti was made around 1640. The most recent gifts are from 1975.

The mahogany paneling in the lobby of the royal post ship Alcantara was stored in England after the war, was auctioned and some of it was brought to Żabbar in 1951. Here the panels for an open air altar were used as the destination of the first two-wheeled pilgrimage to Malta, to which Pope Pius XII. Our Lady of Grace appointed as Patroness. Today they serve as a small exhibition hall in the museum.

additional

Further exhibits are the true-to-scale ship model from 1768 of a ship of the line of the Maltese Navy such as the painting of the carrack Santa Anna owned by a Maltese captain's family.

From aviation accident in 1975 testify newspaper clippings, photos and aircraft parts.

literature

  • Ġużeppi Theuma: The Żabbar Sanctuary Museum Żabbar 2010.
  • Ġużeppi Zarb: Naval History of the Order and the Sanctuary of Żabbar , Extract from Times of Malta 30th / 31st August 1951.

Web links

360 ° panoramic view on the ground floor of the museum (visited on November 2, 2014)

Coordinates: 35 ° 52 ′ 29.5 ″  N , 14 ° 32 ′ 1.5 ″  E