Church of San Michele Arcangelo In Villa Di Metelliano

Incorrectly called S. Angelo, this church is 5 km from Cortona and is on the eastern side of the Val d'Esse.

It is a Romanesque-Byzantine church whose origins are unknown, but we do know that it already existed around the year 1000. Amongst the theories about its construction, there is one which dates it back to Maginardo Aretino, on behalf of the Bishop of Arezzo, Teobaldo, who would have sent him to Ravenna to study the Romanesque and Byzantine. In the church of S. Angelo, alongside the elements of true Romanesque-monastic architecture (three naves with apses), there are also signs of a break with tradition such as the new verticalism (emphasized by the alternating large Romanesque pilasters with slender Byzantine columns, topped by truncated pyramid capitals) which seem to announce the imminent Gothic. The columns, with the exception of the last two near the presbytery, carne without doubt from an earlier building (one can see their irregularity and the cuts made to adapt them to the height of the church).

The façade is also probably the result of an adaptation of an earlier building (see the little room above the central doorway). Internally, the church is 28.50 m. long, 10.80 m. wide and 10 m. high. Unlike primitive basilicas, it does not have a crypt. The central apse is double the side apses, and higher with the transenna which look onto the roofs of the side naves. The apses, circular on the outside, are sparsely decorated, with blind arches, typical of architecture between the 6th and 10th centuries.

The fourteen Stations of the Cross are by the Cortonese artist, Donatella Marchini (1962). One of the bells is a work of 1504 by "Nicola di Johannes de Cortona", while the other of 1754 is by an unknown author.