The monument symbolising Piedmont region
We visited the Sacra di San Michele few days ago, together with some friends from Varese; it has been a great experience! You can see the Shire from a distance, infact it rises on the top of a mountain, so you start enjoying the visit in advance... and when you reach the entrance the excitement is in the highest degree!!
The Shrine of Saint Michael was born between 983 and 987 to meet with the demands and the culture of pilgrimage: it's one of the largest European religious Romanesque architectural complexes, the result of construction and enlargements made over a millennium. The three chapels, built in the rocks under the present basilica, show the dawn of the settlement; it's from them that the ancient monastery developed (XI c.). 
The present three aisles basilica dates to the XII century. It lays on the primitive cells and on the basement built around the Grand Stairway of the Dead. The church's western spans and the buildings in the north of the complex date back to the Gothic period. The XII century was the period of its greatest splendour, it gave hospitality to pilgrims and aristocrats and was a fulcrum of a patrimony that spread all over Europe.
Entrance is the most superb portion of the Abbey. The façade (just a little over 135 feet) is decorated by a combination of colours and geometry, the straight lines of the iron-grey foundation and the greenish full curves of the church. The façade ends in the apse and in the gallery made by arches (the "viretti") which is one of the most beautiful Romanesque apsidal loggia in Italy.
From the entrance, the church is reached through a large and steep stairway. After the first few steps, on the left there is a pilaster over 18 meters high (about 60 feet) which supports the church's floor; to the right the large greenish rock invades the front wall; some arches may be noticed, as well as tombs and wide niches which, until the recent restoration, containned the skeletons of some monks, hence the name of the Stairway of the Dead. The silence of the centuries dominates everything. 
The door of the zodiac stands on the top of the steep Stairway of the Dead. Beautiful work by Maestro Nicolao, a famous sculptor during the twelfth century. It's made of pieces of marble.
Going upwards, the jamb to the right shows the signs of the zodiac, while the jamb to the left, other constellations; there are slender and elegant columns, with capitals telling biblical stories (Cain and Abel, Samson and Delilah) or symbolic stories (women tearing each other's hair; women nourishing snakes, lions with a dragon's head and tail).
After a large terrace, is the artistic Romanesque doorway of grey and green stones: there are arches, cornes and string-cournes supported by semi-columns ending with flowery capitals. On the top, the dripstone ended with the head of a hooded monk and the head of a young man (now lost). on both sides, right and left, are the columns with three foiled arches, all that remains of the porch that used to protect the door. The door panels, dated 1826, are decorated with the arms of the Archangel St. Michael and with the devil represented as a snake with a human face.
For information contact the Rosminian Fathers: phone 0039011939130; fax 0039011939706
web site: http://www.sacradisanmichele.com/
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