Inaugurated in 1988 and enlarged in 2003, the Capitular Museum is situated in a few rooms adjoining Saint Thomas Cathedral, which used to be in the past private chapels. It collects and exhibits handworks saved from the heavy bombardment that drastically disrupted the town and razed the ancient cathedral to the ground during the Second World War. Among the most important works there are the seventeenth-century canvases painted by Tommaso Alessandrini (born in Ortona but become an adopted son of Venice) and by the Lombard artist Giovanni Battista Rusconi. The museum keeps valuable gold ware such as a sixteenth-century processional cross and sculpture works like a sixteenth-century carved cross representing the transfer of Saint Thomas's relics.