Francis asked to be buried on the hill where the condemned were executed, the Collis inferni; after his death they renamed it Collis paradisi and built two churches on it, one above the other. The foundation stone was laid in 1228, the day after his canonisation, and when the body arrived in procession in 1230 the friars hid it, afraid it would be stolen: nobody knew where it lay until the excavations of 1818 found it in a sarcophagus under the high altar of the lower church. The basilica was consecrated in 1253 and has been a UNESCO site since 2000.
What to see
The two churches are opposites. The upper one is tall and bright, a single nave of four bays with ribbed vaults and stained glass that adds up to the most complete collection of medieval windows in Italy; along the walls run the 28 scenes from the life of Francis, the cycle tradition assigns to Giotto and art historians have argued over for more than a century. In the transept, Cimabue's Crucifixion has inverted itself: the lead white oxidised, the lights turned dark, and the fresco now reads like a photographic negative.
The lower church is low, dark and Romanesque, and centuries of patronage filled it with chapels. There is the chapel of Saint Martin frescoed by Simone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti's left transept with its Deposition, the Magdalene chapel from Giotto's workshop, and Cimabue's Maestà, which holds the closest thing to a true likeness of Francis that survives. Below, a nineteenth-century crypt keeps the tomb; alongside stand the Sacro Convento and the treasury museum.
Visiting
There are two entrances on two levels: the lower square leads into the lower church, the upper square to the Gothic portal of the upper one, and an internal staircase joins them. Admission is free, but the rules of a working church apply: shoulders and knees covered, silence, no photographs. The earthquake of 26 September 1997 brought down two vaults of the upper basilica, killed four people who were inspecting the damage and shattered 130 square metres of fresco, Cimabue's Saint Matthew among them; the restoration took two years. Allow two hours to look properly, ideally with the audio guide or one of the guided visits run by the friars.
Our editors' tip
We always begin in the lower church and climb afterwards: you move from dark to light the way pilgrims did, and Giotto's scenes come at the end rather than the start. Go as it opens, before the coaches: by mid-morning the upper nave is full and the murmur covers everything. And give Cimabue's Crucifixion a few extra minutes, because the eye adjusts and the negative resolves.
