In the Murgia, as well as in the rest of Apulia and Southern Italy, there are numerous caves dedicated to St. Angelo or St. Michael, hitherto considered manifestations of the spread of the cult of the Archangel Michael after his apparition in the cave of Monte Sant’Angelo on the Gargano in the 6th century.
In Santeramo, the sanctuary of Sant’Angelo is characterised by a vast karst cavity with access from a medieval church, now incorporated into a rural building for pastoral use.
In 1971, Don Ignazio Fraccalvieri was the first to describe the cavity, illustrated the pictorial cycle present, pointed out the presence of numerous graffiti engraved on the cave walls and drew attention to the historical and cultural potential of the site.
In 1981, in order to ensure the conservation of the property, the Ministry of Cultural and Environmental Heritage ascertained its cultural value with the following, albeit brief, motivation ‘remarkable document of medieval architecture and rural settlement of the 13th-15th centuries in the province of Bari. The complex consists of a number of ground-floor barrel-vaulted buildings characterised by an apparatus of walls in local hard stone and roughly regular rows, and caves below containing traces of Byzantine frescoes’.
However, we had to wait until the early 2000s when, thanks to the interest of architect Giuseppe Fiorentino, a multidisciplinary study group was formed, with the participation of scholars such as Roberto Caprara for archaeology and palaeography, Franco dell’Aquila for the history of the area and the rock, Domenico Caragnano for the study of the frescoes, Luciano Rampino for local history, Umberto Ricci for precise photographic documentation, and Giuseppe Fiorentino for the study of historical architectural structures, surveys of the reservoir and a proposal for its recovery and valorisation, framed within a broader territorial system within the then-born Alta Murgia National Park.
The reconnaissance study and research of the cave and the site revealed intense frequentation and a Christian dedication of the cave, attested in particular by the thousands of inscriptions datable from the 5th century A.D. to the 15th century, evidence of a micaelico cult of primary importance in Apulia, and a cult of the dripping waters perhaps already in preclassical times.
The scientific contents of the exhibition derive, in particular, from the aforementioned research and the support of scholars D. Caragnano, F. dell’Aquila, G. Fiorentino, as well as all Archeoclub members and partners.