The Sanctuary of San Michele Arcangelo

The place was the object of a privileged cult and destination of the peoples who wrote the history of the medieval Mediterranean: the Lombards, who first of all made the custody of the Michaelic sanctuary their spiritual mission, then the Normans, the Swabians, the Angevins and on the other side the usual “enemies”, the Byzantines. An obligatory stop for all travelers – Christian pilgrims or warriors in arms leaving for the crusades – heading for the Holy Land, the sanctuary, whose foundation dates back to around 493, offers the visitor traces of the cultures that have passed through it, such as the inscriptions in runic characters that Scandinavian travelers, stopping on the road to Jerusalem, engraved on the walls of the cave, the Bull Portal which leads to the cave created in Constantinople (1076), and the bell tower commissioned by Charles I of Anjou, completed in 1282. As is typical in the medieval architecture of Puglia, Germanic origins and oriental influences blend, sublimated by centuries of exchanges, and the subsequent works brought to the sanctuary, such as the altar of the Saint from the end of the sixteenth century or the baroque motifs of the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, testify the ever-living presence of the Sanctuary of San Michele Arcangelo in the artistic and religious culture of Southern Italy.