The old town of Terra Murata developed around the benedictine Abbey of San Michele Arcangelo (St. Michael the Archangel) founded in 1206 on a preexisting religious complex which belonged to the 5th century. But it is believed that this location has always had a religious function since from the antiquity and that here was a temple dedicated to Neptune the Agriculturist, a particular representation of the sea god that combined two complementary aspects of life in Procida: fishing and agriculture, both essential to the population.

The original main facade of the Abbey church faces due the west, according to the typical disposition of the paleochristian churches. It has a simple romanesque front, ending on top with a gable, from whose corners they start two volutes in Renaissance style added in following times. In the context of the town rearrangement ordered by the Cardinal of Avalos on the early years of 16th century, the church was provided with a new entrance on the east edge (and precisely in the south arm of the transept) to allow people entering from the new square built in the old centre. The new east facade, which became the main one as the time passed, was restructured more than once: on the keystone of the entry arch it is written the date of 1898, related to the last renovation works of a certain importance.

At the beginning the church was composed by a single nave with some lateral chapels. Between the end of the 16th century and the first half of the 17th, they built two aisles and began the arrangement of the apse with the stucco decorations and the wooden choir with three orders of chairs. During the 2nd half of 17th century they attended to the painted decoration of the church: they ordered many oil paintings, among which the "great canvases" for the apse, and the lost frescos of the dome. During the first decades of 18th century they proceeded for the final arrangement of the apse, of the stucco decorations of the nave, of the main altar; but the most demanding work was certainly the new marble flooring, since they lowered the ground floor (with large removal of rubble) in order to get more space inside the nave, reduced by the setting of the wooden ceiling under the trabeation.  [ More...]