What to see in Monte Sant’Angelo, a town in Puglia in the Gargano in the province of Foggia, where the Sanctuary dedicated to San Michele Arcangelo is located.
Tourist information
Monte Sant'Angelo is part of the Gargano National Park and has been included in the list of Unesco World Heritage Sites, as it is a very significant testimony of the religious history of the Lombards of the Duchy of Benevento, as evidenced by the many epigraphs that pilgrims they left as a trace of their passage in some rooms of the Sanctuary, dating back to the VII-IX century. The village is located about 800 meters above sea level. overlooking the Gulf of Manfredonia, in the southern part of the Gargano promontory.
The historic center of Monte Sant'Angelo is dominated by the castle on which the pentagonal tower called the Tower of the Giants stands out.
Through various expansion and restoration works, the building bears witness to the passage of the Norman, Swabian, Angevin and Aragonese dominations.
To visit the Sanctuary built on previous works, in the thirteenth century, by Charles I of Anjou. The cave where St. Michael the Archangel appeared can be reached via the Angevin staircase consisting of 86 steps and divided into 5 ramps, which leads from the upper atrium to the lower atrium of the Basilica, where the crypts are located.
The bell tower of the Basilica, originally a watchtower built by Frederick II, was transformed into a bell tower in 1274, commissioned by Charles I of Anjou, as a thank you to San Michele for the conquest of southern Italy.
What see
Near the Basilica there is the church of San Pietro, characterized by a beautiful openwork rose window.
The complex includes the remains of the oldest town church dedicated to San Pietro, of which only the apse basin from the Romanesque period remains.
Inside there is the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Tumba, known and erroneously called "Tomba di Rotari", to the right of which opens the entrance that leads to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, a splendid example of Apulian Romanesque.
The history of the Sanctuary is linked to the cult of San Michele Arcangelo, which in the fifth century appeared in a cave to the Bishop of Siponto al Gargano.
With the Lombard dynasty, around the middle of the seventh century, the place became a sanctuary, the destination of a large flow of pilgrims, who arrived there through the path of the Via Sacra Langobardorum that led to the Holy Land.
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Monte Sant'Angelo in the east, Mont St. Michel in the north, the Sacra di San Michele in the Alps, constituted the main places of worship of San Michele Arcangelo, located at the outposts of ancient Christianity.
About 8 km from Monte Sant'Angelo there is the Abbey of Santa Maria di Pulsano, with a thousand-year history.
The abbey complex, whose original foundation dates back to the sixth century, in its present forms, which were seriously damaged by the earthquake in 1646, was built by the will of Blessed Joel, third general abbot of the pulsanesi monks (1145-1177), on the top of the hill of Pulsano, overlooking the Gulf of Manfredonia, in a very suggestive naturalistic landscape, between rock and cliffs, where there are also 24 hermitages connected together by a network of narrow streets and steep paths, which are in a state of degradation, but that the Fai, Fondo Ambiente Italiano, plans to restore and enhance.
