St. Francis's hill town — Giotto's frescoed basilica, pink-stone lanes, and Umbrian views that explain the saint.
Explore → Get Early AccessPilgrim season without August heat
Basilica plus the hill town
Regional trains, then bus/taxi uphill
The Basilica’s upper church cycle
Assisi glows pink on its Umbrian hillside, crowned by the Basilica where Giotto painted St. Francis's life — a pilgrimage site that welcomes the unreligious with equal grace. Evenings, after the buses leave, it's transcendent.
Francis, a rich merchant's son turned barefoot saint, died here in 1226; within two years the basilica rose, and Giotto's fresco cycle on its walls taught European painting to tell stories with human faces.
The 1997 earthquake collapsed part of the basilica's vault, and restorers reassembled shattered frescoes from 300,000 recovered fragments — art history's most painstaking jigsaw. Francis is Italy's patron saint; the current Pope took his name.
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