The church of San Michele is recorded as early as 973 and was Oleggio's parish church until the sixteenth century, when the town moved to the new church of Saints Peter and Paul. Since then it has served the cemetery, and being abandoned is exactly what saved it: nobody rebuilt it, and the Romanesque stayed where it was.
What to see
Inside are fresco cycles from the second half of the eleventh century, among the few examples of Romanesque painting still visible in northern Italy. The inner façade carries a great Last Judgement: angels, saints and the Virgin above, then the apostles, then churchmen and monks in half-length, and at the bottom three patriarchs holding the souls of the blessed in their hands — the souls of the damned, which stood on the right, are lost. In the central apse Christ in Majesty has beside him Saint Michael leading a host of angels.
Visiting
The church is a three-naved basilica, its walls alternating river cobbles and brick: that is what gives it its colour. The presbytery is raised by nine steps and beneath it lies the crypt, divided into three small aisles by rough columns with neither base nor capital. The façade is asymmetrical and the door is off-centre: the explanation is that the building adapted itself to the walls of the earlier Lombard place of worship, brought to light in the excavations of 2001.
Our editors' tip
Beneath the apse decoration, recent scholarship has recognised scenes from the Liber de apparitione sancti Michaelis: there is the shepherd who shoots an arrow at a bull escaped from his herd and is struck by the same arrow, come mysteriously back. Once you know, you find it.