The Museum of the Cathedral Treasure is situated in the underground rooms of the cathedral itself. It is accessed through the entrance under the majestic Romanesque bell tower, which is remarkable for the fact that it houses a second smaller campanile, dating from the 10th century. Archaeological excavations, conducted beneath the church between 2007 and 2008, revealed the evolution of the Roman public area, namely the eastern side of the forum that was the site of 1st-2nd-century AD building. Here a phase of private building was superimposed during Late Antiquity, with the foundation of the first church in the 6th century that (together with the baptismal font) allows the dating of the origins of the Diocese of Alba, the early medieval transformations, and the Romanesque and Renaissance rebuilding. The museum consists of an archaeological narrative path accompanied by educational apparatus, and the exhibition rooms, the Crypt of San Pietro and the Sala dello Stemma, which house the remains of the early medieval liturgical furnishings and the epigraphic collection with pieces from the Romanesque and Gothic cathedral and from the Renaissance one built by Bishop Andrea Novelli. Along the exhibition route, visitors can admire several display cases that house pottery from the Roman period and the Middle Ages, glass fragments from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages that constitute a little liturgical treasure, painted plaster from the oldest stages of the building’s pictorial decoration, which were obliterated by the late 15th-century rebuilding, and coins, including a Justinian II pentanummium, the first find of a Byzantine coin in a Piedmontese excavation.

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