Montescaglioso

Montescaglioso is a hilltop town in Matera province, Basilicata, whose historic centre grew around the Benedictine Territorial Abbey of San Michele Arcangelo, one of the most important monuments in the region. The abbey itself rises on the remains of an earlier Italic-Hellenic settlement, of which an acropolis, some urban structures, and a necropolis survive.

The earliest written record of Montescaglioso and of Benedictine monks in the area dates to 893 AD; the abbey is recorded among San Michele's properties by 1099 and is documented as existing at least from 1078, with some sources suggesting earlier origins. Once a Byzantine stronghold, the town was taken by the Normans after the year 1000, and the abbey flourished with substantial support from the Norman lord Humphrey of Hauteville and his son through the 15th century, before wars and neglect led to its decline; it had to be rebuilt around the end of the 1400s. In 1784 the monks abandoned the abbey for Lecce, and much of its art, library, and archive were lost or dispersed in the process.

The Benedictine Abbey of San Michele Arcangelo, with its layered history from ancient Italic-Hellenic remains through Byzantine, Norman, and later periods, is the town's principal landmark.

Montescaglioso is near Matera, the larger city in the same province.