The Custodia di Terra Sancta is a branch of the Franciscan order, established by the pope in 1342 to safeguard the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and other holy sites in the Middle East, from Syria in the north to Egypt in the south. Today, the Custodia oversees eighty-two such religious sites and, in order to house its remarkable collection, is building the Terra Sancta Museum which is scheduled to open in Jerusalem in 2026.

Over the course of centuries Christian heads of state from across the Western world sent symbolic gifts to the Holy Sepulcher and other holy sites via the Franciscans of the Custodia. The objects, which range in date from the late Middle Ages through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, represent an extraordinary survival of the kinds of objects in precious materials that were typically destroyed and melted down. Highlights of the Terra Sancta Museum’s collection include more than 60 pieces of goldsmith and silversmith work and textiles that date from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries; among these are chalices and candlesticks in gold and silver and opulent liturgical vestments that were sumptuous gifts from the French and Spanish kings.