Sacra di San Michele

45.0975°N, 7.3431°E.

Romanesque-Gothic abbey on Monte Pirchiriano in the Susa Valley, Piedmont, Italy, 962 metres above sea level. Built between 983 and 987 CE by Hugh of Montboissier as a Benedictine monastery, the abbey perches on a peak that drops 1,000 metres on three sides into the valley. The Sacra is one of seven Saint Michael sanctuaries forming a 2,000-km line from Skellig Michael in Ireland through Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, the Sacra di San Michele itself, Monte Sant'Angelo on Italy's Adriatic coast, the monasteries of Symi and Mount Carmel, and ending at Stella Maris in Haifa. The line falls within 0.5° of the May 8 sunrise (the feast of the Apparition of St Michael). The Stairway of the Dead climbs 243 carved-rock steps from the abbey base. Umberto Eco used the Sacra as the model for the abbey in The Name of the Rose.

Seven Saint Michael shrines lie in a line spanning Western Europe to the Levant — and the line falls on the bearing of the May Day sunrise.