Santuario di San Michele Arcangelo al Monte Faito, Catholic shrine on Monte Faito, Vico Equense, Italy

The Santuario di San Michele Arcangelo al Monte Faito is a Catholic church in Vico Equense, built from 1937 on a site called Cercasole at about 1,200 metres on Monte Faito, not on the old abbey's summit. Its facade of grey stone has a wide arched portal and a blind rose window; inside is a single nave, a Slovenian oak altar carved in Val Gardena and a tabernacle by Raffaele Scotti.

A first wooden temple with a lead roof, funded by a donation from the Holy See, rose on Monte Sant'Angelo, also called Molare, after Saints Michael appeared in a dream to Catello and Antonino. Recognised as an abbey by 1392, it was struck by lightning in 1689 and destroyed by fire in 1818. The present church was begun on 24 October 1937 at Cercasole, about 1,200 metres up and on a different site from the old abbey, and consecrated on 24 September 1950 after the Second World War halted work; devotees carried its bricks up on foot.

The shrine's cult centres on the manna said to have sweated from the statue of Saint Michael, first recorded in 1558 when refugees from a Turkish raid on Sorrento fled to Monte Faito; the miracle was reported again in 1750 and in 1843, two days after the church's consecration, when it was shown to King Ferdinand II. Saint Michael was proclaimed co-patron of Castellammare di Stabia in 1703, and on 19 January, the feast of Saint Catello, a priest once found the meadow around the church covered with tulips out of season.

The shrine sits on a mountain summit and can be reached on foot or by cable car from the valley below, so sturdy footwear is a good idea. There are few facilities at the top, so it is worth bringing water and anything else you might need for the visit.

The old statue of Saint Michael, kept in the co-cathedral of Castellammare di Stabia, is 102 cm tall in white marble and was long dated to the 6th century as a gift of Pope Gregory I to Saint Catello; recent studies attribute it instead to the school of Francesco Laurana, around the 15th century.