It is one of the most interesting examples of Angevin architecture in the region. It was built around 1336, at the behest of Filippo Sangineto, first count of Altomonte, on a previous Norman building dedicated to Santa Maria de ‘Franchis.Further extensions were made in the early decades of the fifteenth century by the Sanseverinos, who took over from the Sangineto in possession of the county. In 1443 it passed to the Dominicans, who founded a monastery there.The new building, a Latin cross with a single nave completed by two side chapels, largely reworked in the Baroque period, and rectilinear apse, reflects the pattern of Neapolitan Angevin buildings. It has a large transept covered by cross vaults on which the “roof aisle” is juxtaposed.The façade, flanked by a massive bell tower, shows some elements of clear French derivation, such as the rose window, the portal with a straight architrave and a vegetable motif that runs in the splay of the arch that frames it.The interior houses the funerary monument of the Sangineto family, the cobble-stone tomb of Ruffo and the tomb of an unknown knight, right at the entrance to the church. Further works of exquisite workmanship are on the left wall the fresco of a saint (probably part of a larger cycle, improperly called the Madonna della Consolazione), a wooden choir with 37 stalls from 1480 and the wooden altar. carved and gilded in baroque style dedicated to San Michele.Adjacent to the church is the former convent of the Dominican Fathers, today the seat of the Civic Museum of Altomonte.
