At the western edge of the Turin plain, the Sacra di San Michele rises from Monte Pirchiriano as though the rock had been built upward into a church. The first surprise is geographical: this is not an abbey hidden in a village, but a landmark placed over the entrance to the Susa Valley. Approach it with time to look back toward the valley, because the setting explains why travellers have treated the place as both a destination and a threshold. Its appeal lies in that meeting of mountain, architecture and worship.
The institution dates the complex's beginnings to between 983 and 987. Benedictine monks cared for it in its early centuries; the Rosminian fathers have been responsible since 1837. Those dates describe a long religious history, but the building is no frozen illustration of a single century. A church, stairways and monastic remains stand on a difficult summit, and their successive changes are easier to understand if you read the stone as a response to the rock beneath it. A defensive outlook and a pilgrimage destination have shared the same mountain.
