Musei della Basilica Santuario San Michele Arcangelo

The Museum collects headstone materials found both inside the sanctuary and from other sites around the sanctuary. The largest group of materials and the start of the lapidary are connected with the excavations carried out in the mid 50s from last century by Mons. Nicola Quitadamo. These, conducted between 1949 and 1955, have unearthed the structures concerning the oldest phases of the sanctuary. The intervention had the immediate purpose to restore the discoveries from the Swabian-Anjou Age and create the functional structures of the attendance of the sanctuary. The excavation interested both the inside space of the modern sanctuary and the areas immediately surrounding. Inside, the discovery of some spaces below the floor of the rectory led to the discovery of the so-called “Lombard gallery”, the present location of the Lapidary Museum, which was once used as a mass grave. The original facade of the “gallery” was unearthed only in 1974 when a wall that pierced it was knocked down. As for the Lapidary Museum, excavations in the fifties revealed a considerable fortune of materials from different ages and layouts. The Devotional Museum was founded in 1989.