Teseum, Religious art museum in Tongeren, Belgium

The Teseum is a museum of religious art and a conserved archaeological site in Tongeren, run by the municipality's heritage service and opened in 2016. It occupies the former chapter house on the Graanmarkt, two 16th-century chapels, the upper rooms of the monastery wings and the excavated ground beneath the Basilica of Our Lady. The church treasury, over a thousand years old, is displayed in glass cases on wooden bases under the pitched, beamed roof of a long hall.

The Teseum opened in 2016, partly under the Basilica of Our Lady and partly in the chapter house and monastery rooms. The church treasure it displays includes a 6th-century Byzantine ivory relief of Saint Paul, a 10th-century ivory crucifixion plaque in a 12th-century silver-bound evangeliary, and a Maasland reliquary given around 1200 by the Liège chapter of Saint Lambert. About twelve silver reliquary busts from the 15th and 16th centuries survived the French period here.

The displays follow themes: early Christianity in Tongeren, the origin of the treasury, relic veneration, the liturgy, musical life and the Coronation Feasts. A listening box lets visitors hear religious music among old choirbooks and manuscripts, and a banner hanging from the roof beams bears the Hebrew letters "קדר".

The entrance and reception are in the former chapter house on the Graanmarkt, not in a separate museum quarter. From there the route continues into the cloister, the pandhof and two 16th-century chapels, the Sint-Annakapel and Allerheiligenkapel. The archaeological cellars lie beneath the basilica itself, so allow time for both levels.

The archaeological section lies beneath the basilica and shows the remains of a Roman townhouse with its bathing area, parts of the late-Roman city wall, a fourth-century basilica and the first Merovingian church of the sixth century. The entrance and reception occupy the former chapter house on the Graanmarkt, which incorporates a round defence tower from the monastery enclosure that predates the medieval city wall.