The story of this place
St Francis, born to a wealthy Assisi merchant around 1181, renounced his fortune to embrace radical poverty, founded the Franciscan order, and reportedly preached to birds and received the stigmata before dying in 1226. Canonised just two years later, he was buried here, and the double basilica rose over his tomb from 1228. Its Upper Church holds a famous fresco cycle of his life traditionally attributed to Giotto—a turning point toward naturalism in Western art. On 26 September 1997 an earthquake struck during an inspection, collapsing vaults and killing four people; part of Cimabue's and Giotto's frescoes shattered into 300,000 fragments, painstakingly reassembled over years. Assisi remains a global pilgrimage centre.