San Michele Arcangelo

The masterpiece of this small baroque church is not hung on the walls or painted on the ceiling. It’s the floor itself, where in 1761 master majolica (ceramic tile) painter, Leonardo Chiaiese, completed his vision of the Garden of Eden.

Central to the story and Adam and Eve’s banishment is the tree of knowledge, serpent wound sinuously around its trunk, in the middle of the floor. To the right a rueful Adam and Eve seem about to run out of the church door, driven by the Archangel with his flaming sword. The landscape is studded with real and fantasy animals, static witnesses to Man’s ruin.

This floor is so precious that visitors creep around it on discreet duckboards, as if avoiding acqua alta (high water) in Venice. But the best view is always from the gallery, a lordlike position from which to survey Creation.