The church, dedicated to St Michael the Archangel, lies on the western slopes of Monte Tifata.The church was built in the eleventh century by Desiderius, the abbot of Monte Cassino, who also rebuilt that abbey.The "lunette over the entrance with a half-length figure of St. Michael and above him an orant Virgin in a medallion supported by flying angels, with an inscription in Greek on the lintel at the foot.The evangelists around the enthroned Christ in the Apse are in the form of the four symbolic creatures of the Latin tradition, rather than being shown as figures (often seating at writing desks) in the Greek manner.The content of individual scenes and the grouping of figures is described by Hall as being "typically Byzantine", but the whole forms an historical narrative series on the Western model, evidently just as in the basilicas of early Christian Rome.