Legend has it that the monastery was established at the beginning of the 11th century by St Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolese Benedictines, who had previously been living a secluded life in the nearby cave on the slopes of Lim Bay. Part of the cloister and two churches have been preserved of the once mighty St Michael’s Abbey. The smaller church is a sixth-century early Byzantine building with a polygonal apse, a barrel vault and traces of frescoes (probably dating to the 8th century) dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The larger, eleventh-century church of St Michael is a hall church with a semi-circular apse. The original transennae with interlaced decoration are preserved in the lateral wall, high under the roof. In the church there are also the remains of Romanesque frescoes depicting the martyrdom and stoning of St Stephen. The best-preserved representation is the figure of a saint on the right side of the triumphal arch. The young-looking tonsured figure with a crosier stick represents a Benedictine saint, perhaps the very St Romuald. Figures are shaped using light and dark contours, with characteristic red spots on the cheeks. There is a broad range of iconographic and painting models, from Carolingian elements in ornamentation to Hellenistic-oriental (Byzantine) motifs in clothes. All of these elements are characteristic of South German Benedictine art of the Ottonian period.
The south wing of the abbey resting on arches facing the courtyard (cloister) was constructed in the 13th century. The Romanesque wellhead at the centre of the cloister is decorated with a stylised Camaldolese coat of arms with two doves drinking from the chalice.
Over the centuries, the monastic estate that encompassed a large share of Kontija Forest kept expanding owing to donations of the Istrian nobility. Following a short period of abandonment due to plague epidemics, it was home to the Knights Templar. The Camaldolese monastery of St Michael in Murano near Venice took it over in 1394, and it later came into possession of the monastery of St Matthew in Murano. The cartographic representation of the entire estate from the 15th century by the renowned Venetian cartographer Fra Mauro has been preserved in its seventeenth-century printed form. The monks left the monastery in 1652. Following a land exchange in 1772, the estate became property of the noble Coletti family from Conegliano that built a Neoclassical palace on the monastery ruins. At the time, the complex was the centre of a farming estate organized in compliance with contemporary principles of modern agriculture. After the death of the last male family member, it became state property in the second half of the 19th century, the headquarters of the forest estate for a period of time. However, the palace, the monastery buildings and the churches eventually became dilapidated and started to fall into decay, until the beginning of the 21st century and the launching of the planning phase for the renovation of the complex. Conservation works have so far included the churches, with ongoing research aimed at revitalising the whole complex.
