Città Sant’Angelo - Collegiata di San Michele Arcangelo

As the Lombards had a kind of cult of Archangel Michael, some connect the early medieval time here with them. The first document where the commune is mentioned as is "CIVITATE S. ANGELI" from the Carolingian Emperor Louis II of Italy, in 875. As Città Sant'Angelo was a Guelph town much in favor of Pope Gregory IX in the struggle against the Holy Roman Empire, it got by the troops of Frederick II, who subsequently granted the survivors the right to rebuild the town in three hamlets The reconstruction of a fortified semicircular core began after 1240. With the arrival of the monastic orders in the first half of the 14th century came the expansion of existing churches and the construction of monasteries.

The church of San Michele Arcangelo was built around 1200 and raised to the rank of a collegiate church in 1353. It was built in the historical center of the town on an artificial base of an earlier construction, probably from the 8th or 9th century. The church was enlarged during the Renaissance. Actually it is two churches, because there are two separate naves of which the wider one is dedicated to S. Michele, the narrower one to S. Giovanni. The central portal, created by Raimondo di Poggio, is dated 1326. Some details of the portal.