Onufri National Museum in Berat

The National Iconographic Museum "Onufri" (Albanian: Muzeu Kombëtar Ikonografik "Onufri") is an Albanian national museum dedicated to Byzantine art and iconography in Berat, Albania. The museum is located inside the Church of the Dormition of St Mary in the castle quarter Berat. The museum was named to honor Onufri, an Albanian painting Headmaster of the 16th century. Onufri painted some of the most important, divine, and beautiful religious painting in Albania, and there’s nowhere better to see his unforgettable tones of colour than here in the churches of Berat, and the museum dedicated to this artistic legend. The museum features on display 173 objects chosen among 1500 objects belonging to the found of Albanian Churches and Monasteries as well as to Berat. Built in 1797, this cathedral is situated at the highest altitude of the Berat Castle, though it can be a little difficult to find. While the Ottomans were Muslim, they allowed Christians to continue practicing their faith and build churches, though not very visibly. This cathedral is one of them, a typical church of three naves and two rows of tall stone columns. Inside, you initially find yourself facing the Holy Altar with masterful engravings and paintings of Bible scenes in the incredibly lavish and ornate iconostasis of the Cathedral – the only one to have survived from the former metropolitan complex. The iconostasis, created in 1807, the most eye-catching part of the interior of the church, is considered one of the greatest accomplishments of the 19th-century Albanian wood-carving masters. It stretches along the entire interior of the cathedral and includes twelve royal icons as well as twenty-seven small festive icons. The royal icons, objects of reverence and worship, carved in wood and covered in gold, are simply magnificent! However this trip inside the Onufri Museum does not end here! Visitors coming out of the Cathedral are continue to seek that unforgettable “Onufri red”, whose special formula the master painter never revealed, and one whose influence is spread across almost every church within the Castle of Berat!