The roof of the dome is painted emerald green and you pick it out from a distance, before the square bell tower beside it: three tiers, a clock face on each side of the top one, and a wrought-iron cage holding the small bells that strike the hour. San Francesco is Agnone's principal church, and the Order of Friars Minor Conventual still occupies the friary next door.
What to see
The façade gives little away: a plain wall surface, an equally modest rose window. The piece worth stopping for is the old pointed-arch portal, the clearest surviving trace of the Gothic building the church began as, before the interior was reworked in Baroque forms. The contrast is the whole point: an almost bare wall outside, seventeenth-century abundance inside. There is a single nave, and the eye travels upward almost at once, because the ceiling is wooden coffering and every panel carries a scene from the New Testament. The altar is dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi and holds a copy of the San Damiano Crucifix.
Part of the friary survives alongside, now reduced to a long square cloister and a small yard with a stone fountain. The remaining rooms house the Museo del libro permanente, a book museum keeping incunabula and medieval manuscripts: not the sort of collection you expect in a town this size.
Our editors' tip
Go in and stay a few minutes at the back of the nave with your head tilted up: the coffered panels read better from there than from below the altar, where the angle flattens the figures. Then walk round to the cloister, where the street noise cuts out and only the fountain is left. If you have time, ask about the museum: the incunabula and the manuscripts are the reason to plan the visit rather than drop in by chance.
