The Museum of the Verna that we see today was opened in 1992, but it is the second museum of this well-known Francescan Sanctuary after the first one had closed in 1978 due to a large robbery that had occured.
This exhibition is divided in seven rooms that hold works of art and sacred objects, but the museum's main function is to show part of the Francescan life in this place, so isolated on the top of the "crude rock" but at the same time strongly included in the community life of the larger area, not only of the Casentino, but also of the Tiberina Valley, and in part of both the Marche and the Romagna.
The new Museum of the Verna was able to be built thanks to the collective efforts of people, scholars, institutions and the Francescan community, and surely could have never been created without the unstoppable will-power and conviction of the importance of this work by Father Fiorenzo Locatelli, Guardian of the Verna in that period.
The museum, besides being interesting from an historical-artistic point of view, is strongly emotional from a spiritual point of view. The surroundings and certain objects of this exhibition can surely be considered suggestive. Perhaps the part of the Sanctuary where the museum is located is even more evocative: it is next to a 5th century corridor inside the sanctuary's architectural complex and beside a very beautiful cloister, a part which tourists usually do not pass by during their visit to the Verna. This part of the Franciscan monastery already on its own is another museum.
The eighteen images of this gallery and their respective descriptions obviously cannot show the three-hundred-plus objects stored inside the museum, they are only meant to convey an idea of this historical, religious, and cultural environment present in the Verna and to be an invitation to physically go visit it.