On Piazza Noceto, the church of San Michele was founded by Guglielmo Peralta in 1371 and rebuilt in the seventeenth century. It keeps an unusual relic: two Holy Thorns from Christ's crown, donated by Eleonora of Aragon and her husband Guglielmo Peralta, who had received them from the Angevins. The thorns were declared authentic by the bishop of Agrigento in 1386, at the church's inauguration.
What to see
The interior, three naves marked out by columns and arches, is a small casket of art: a fifteenth-century crucifix, two sixteenth-century holy-water fonts, a sculpture by Domenico Gagini, a sixteenth-century polyptych and a seventeenth-century wooden statue of Saint Michael. In a reliquary are kept the two Holy Thorns, the heart of local devotion. Outside, beside the architraved doorway, opens an older Gothic portal, a memory of the fourteenth-century building.
Our editors' tip
Look for the Gothic portal on the side: it is what remains of the church of 1371, before the Baroque rebuilding. And ask about the two Holy Thorns: few know that a relic tied to Christ's crown reached this far, the gift of an Aragonese noblewoman.