Avellino became Christian, and the seat of a bishopric, around 500. The area is home to the Benedictine monastery and sanctuary of Montevergine, founded in 1119 and still visited by thousands of pilgrims annually. This huge complex, set in superb mountainous surroundings, is home to a so-called Black Madonna, an icon said to be a copy of a portrait of the Virgin by St Luke, which was revered in Constantinople. The Montevergine Madonna may be one of the oldest versions of the original, lost many centuries ago, in western Europe, and the monastery stands, as so many do, on the site of a previous pagan shrine.