San Michele Arcangelo (Sant'Angelo in Formis)

In the ancient district of Sant'Angelo in Formis, part of the town of the same name which is a fraction of Capua, at the feuds of Mount Tifata (602 meters a.s.l.) rises this famous Benedictine basilica on the remains of the Roman temple of Diana Tifatina.
The primitive cenoby of the 11th century was constructed largely using the marble parts and the tarsia pavement of the primitive temple, and with the same design, adding the apses at the ends of the naves.
Having surrendered to the Abbey of Montecassino in 1072, the abbot Desiderio di Montecassino (future Pope Victor III) decided to restructure the basilica without changing the primitive character and conserving all of the stone structural and decorative elements of Roman origin. To him are owed the beautiful frescoes of the Byzantine-Campana school, which decorate the interior and make up one of the most important and best-conserved cycles of the era in Southern Italy. Following, around the 12th century, it seems that the reconstruction of the bell tower took place after a collapse. The building, with three naves, with the wide central nave double the size of the side naves, and following the Benedictine-Montecassino architectural model, with the central apse larger and taller than the sides, still in respect to the design of the basilica of San Benedetto in Montecassino, reconstructed by the abbot of Desiderio between 1066 and 1071, this church is deprived of transept.
But that which attracts the major number of visitors is the cycle of frescoes that embellishes the interior of the building: from the Pantocrator Christ that towers the Apsidal conch, surrounded by symbols of the four Gospels, to the three Archangels; on the sides there is abbot Desiderio on the left (depicted with a model of the church in his hands) and San Benedetto in the inferior fascia to the right; the Virgin with Child beside two angels in the apse to the right, where the fresco is divided in two fascias on top of each other; in the inferior fascia there are six saints. Along the wall to the left you'll find many traces of a cycle of well-conserved frescoes representing episodes of the Old Testament. On teh side walls of the central nave are episodes from the New Testament. The frescoes were probably realized by local artists who worked inspiring to the Byzantine model. In fact, the use of Byzantine schemes, as the subdivision of the entire painted cycle in the panels of the painted columns and the disposition of the figures within singular panels is softened by a first, timid attempt of characterizing the figures. Analogously in the large fresco of the counterfaçade there is a depiction of the Universal Judgment.
It makes you think that, in times in which visual communication for images was so rare, the representation of events and legends which unfold decorating all of the walls with a richness of meaning and symbols, often escaping our hurried examination, must have been very important and fascinating for the faithful.