Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo

Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo rises in Italy with a compact late-Baroque silhouette, centred on a hexagonal interior. A dome and small lantern gather light above stuccoed walls and a portal framed by paired columns. The central plan keeps every side close to the luminous space beneath the dome. Its theatrical façade draws your eye from the street towards the sacred centre.

The Trinitarian fathers commissioned the church, which rose between 1784 and 1789. After religious orders were suppressed, the building became a maternity hospice and later a parish church. Bombing in 1942 and 1943 caused severe damage, while repairs began in 1944 and fuller restoration ended in 1967. Conservation work followed around 1999 and 2000, and a Byzantine-rite Catholic community of Italo-Albanian tradition has used the church since the postwar period. A vaulted underground hall from the original eighteenth-century project now hosts cultural activities. Look up at the lantern, then back to the twin columns at the entrance.