On the name there are the Greeks and there is the gravel. Tradition derives Greccio from a Greek colony that fled after wars, and from the name Grecia would have come Grece, Grecce and finally Greccio. Other scholars start instead from the Regesto Farfense, where the place is the curtis de greze: a curtis, that is a self-sufficient medieval estate, and greze, the quarry gravel taken from the two limestone outcrops above the esplanade, today's square, and carted down to make roads in the marshy Rieti plain. The monk Gregorio da Catino names the place in the 11th century; the castle had six towers, three remain, and the largest became in the 17th century the bell tower of the collegiate church. Frederick II's troops destroyed it in 1242, and in 1799 the Napoleonic army came.
Francis of Assisi lived on Monte Lacerone from 1209. Tradition tells that, coming down to preach, he gave a child a burning brand to throw where he would build his dwelling, and the brand reached the rock face where the sanctuary stands today. Between 1223 and 1226 Francis returned to Greccio several times, and at Christmas 1223, with Giovanni Velita, lord of the place, he staged the Nativity for the first time; local sources read that scene also as a message to pope Honorius III, then at Rieti: there is no need to reconquer the Holy Sepulchre by crusade, because the birth of Jesus can be remembered anywhere. The chapel of the Presepio was cut into the grotto and built in 1228, the year of his canonisation.
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Greccio celebrates Saint Michael the Archangel; the village is famous as the place where Saint Francis of Assisi staged the first living nativity scene in history in 1223.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
