Where to Find It

Municipality of Tortorella

Epigraph

Ὁ Ἄρχάγγελος Μιχαήλ
[read: Ho Archághjelos Michaíl]
‘The Archangel Michael’

Description

The place name San Michele strongly characterizes the northern outskirts of Tortorella; and permeates the oldest physiognomy of the town. The street that transversely cuts through the oldest nucleus of the “settlement, which retains the” explicit name of Cívita, also bears this name.
The toponymy of Tortorella eloquently and intriguingly reflects its historical stratification: on a broad Byzantine base, with a prevalence of original anthroponyms and evocative hagionyms, there is an interesting attestation of the arrival of those Ligurian or Piedmontese settlers who, as in Casaletto Spartano, brought their dialectal peculiarities to the local speech at the beginning of the 12th century, and also marked many localities with new, unmistakable Gallo-Italic names.
The Michaelic image of the stamp is freely inspired by the still legible features of the “fresco that decorated the” entrance to the cave of Sant “’Angelo al Rapàro.”