Sant'Angelo d'Alife

The name comes from the archangel Michael, whose cult grew in the early Middle Ages by the grotto named after him, a karst swallow-hole at the foot of the hill. Between the tenth and eleventh centuries the people climbed to the summit, where the first fortifications rose over a Samnite settlement of which traces of megalithic walls remain, and were later strengthened by the Normans; in 1135 the place, known as the oppidum Sancti Angeli cognomento Rabicanum, was well defended and was attacked by Roger the Second during the struggle to annex the county of Alife to the kingdom of Sicily. The rock, later called Rupe Canina, was restored by Frederick the Second, who assigned it to the Teutonic Knights. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the people came down again — and came down on two sides: two settlements formed on opposite slopes of the same hill, and they are the present comuni of Sant'Angelo d'Alife and Raviscanina. Down in the plain, meanwhile, the roads still follow the Roman centuriation of the first century before Christ. Between 1927 and 1945 the comune belonged to the province of Benevento, because that of Caserta had been suppressed.

Beside the parish church stands the chapel of Sant'Antonio Abate, with a late Gothic portal and a cycle of frescoes that once covered the walls entirely: it is one of the most important of the Campanian fifteenth century, roughly datable to the third decade of that century, and yet — despite thorough study — the dating, the painters and the patron all remain open questions. Scholars speak of a cultural area holding together Lazio, Umbria, Abruzzo and Campania, with influences from the Marche and from Spain. What strikes the eye is the tender Gothic of the enthroned Madonna, the fabulous and naive way the stories of Saint Anthony are told and, in the vault, the realism of simple objects set on furniture. In 2011 the site was awarded the title of Italian wonder; the frescoes, however, are threatened by damp, and the problem of preserving them grows ever more urgent. Not far off, the church of Santa Maria di Porta Paradiso, consecrated in 1516, keeps frescoes painted between 1517 and 1518.