Leaving
the square and taking Sopramonte road or Fuorlovado road, reached the
quadrivial crossroads of the Cross and turning left climbing Tiberio
road, you arrive at the entrance of the small chapel of the cross or
St. Michael. Unfortunately the wooden gate is almost always closed,
however it’s possible to glimpse the small doorway covered, on which
there rise a small sail bell-tower and the gateway surmounted by a
late Gothic lunette made of grey stone. It’s not easy to date the
church. According to some scholars the presbytery is before the 11th
century, while the cross vault of the short nave dates from the
second half of the 14th century; on the contrary according
to others the whole structure is dated to the end of 14th
century, with some formal particulars later. Edwin
Cerio ascribes the first construction of the church to the
man-at-arms Alfirello Ferrace, whose family in the 14th
century realized the residential small building of the current Cerio
square. According to Carelli’s scrolls the adjacent rooms, which
were supposed to host monks, are ascribed to another Alfirello Ferrace,
who lived early in sixteenth century. It had to assume a shape of a
small but
independent cloister, erected on a zone wider than the present
one and with three entrances. In the blooming ground in front of the
church there was the churchyard, still in use in 1656 when during the
plague, were buried some plague victims. A new floor made of bright
majolica tiles has replaced the old one. The appellative “the
cross” or “Sacromonte”, with which was named by the natives of
Capri St Michael church and the homonymous mountain, has roots in
the cross planted time ago on the top of the mountain. Later
the church was called St Michael only as from 1803, when the most
ancient chapel that there soared on the top of the homonymous mountain
was closed .
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