The early Christian church (more properly S. Michele Arcangelo), the oldest in Perugia, stands in a suggestive setting, close to the medieval city walls and in an eminent position over the city with which it must have been in visual relationship before the construction of the village. Built in the shape of a Greek cross, at the end of the 5th century or in the first decades of the 6th, it has a circular plan, with the central part higher and covered by a tented roof. Of the additions and tampering made to the building over the centuries, removed with restoration that has brought to light the original structures, the fourteenth-century Gothic portal remains. The interior has the structure of the church of S. Stefano Rotondo in Rome, i.e. a circular ring with a visible roof; in the middle a drum resting on 16 ancient columns with shafts different in height and material (granite, cipollino, black marble) surmounted by reused Roman capitals, Corinthian and figurative, of various types and dates; the roof is supported by eight arches carried by walled hanging columns, added in the 14th century like some frescoes still present on the walls of the temple.
