The church of San Francesco is a Romanesque church in Trani, now a parish. It began with the dedication to the Holy Trinity, and the nearby square, which corresponds to today's piazza Libertà, is called in the Trani dialect «mmèzze a San Franciche», that is, in the middle of San Francesco.
What to see
It is one of the very few well-preserved Apulian Romanesque churches with three domes: the others are San Benedetto in Conversano, Ognissanti in Valenzano and the Cathedral of San Corrado in Molfetta. The main facade ends with a decorated pediment, small arches and the bell-gable; the roof and the three domes are covered with the characteristic chiancarelle, small slabs of local stone. The church had porticoes both in front and along the sides, of which only traces of arches remain on the walls. The original interior was a large rectangular hall divided into three naves by cruciform pillars, with the central nave covered by a succession of three domes; the apse area was later remodelled, with a quadrangular chapel and other changes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the tomb slabs can be recognised the marks of some families of the past, such as the Sifola, the Petagna and the Macchia. On 29 June 2017 the church was enriched by an altarpiece by the Apulian painter Giovanni Gasparro, showing the meeting of Saint Francis of Assisi with Pope Innocent III, who approves the Franciscan rule; a second altarpiece by the same artist, with Saint Nicholas the Pilgrim, patron of the city, was placed on 4 May 2018.
The church seems to have been founded by the abbot Domenico Benincasa, of the Benedictine monastery of Cava de' Tirreni, in 1176, although its existence is already attested in a document of the Chartularium Tremitense, and it was consecrated in 1184 by Archbishop Bertrand II. It arose together with the adjoining Benedictine monastery, now the seat of the municipal library, outside the Lombard walls, near the meeting point of the road linking Trani to neighbouring settlements and the one leading to the Porta Antica: a cluster of buildings that helped persuade Frederick II to enlarge the city walls in the thirteenth century, so that the church came to lie inside the walls, at the entrance to the city. In 1537 church and monastery passed from the Benedictines to the Conventual Franciscans, who obtained from Pope Clement VII permission to move inside the walls, because their old convent, near the Castle, had been destroyed in the Franco-Spanish wars; the church then changed its name. On 1 January 1909 the parish of San Francesco was established.
Visiting
The church is in Trani, on piazza Libertà. The sources consulted give no opening hours or visiting arrangements: check them.
Our editors' tip
The adjoining monastery, before becoming the municipal library, was used as the seat of several technical schools and of the primary school.
