Clare died at San Damiano, outside the walls, in the monastery where she had lived forty years; but Assisi wanted her inside, and in four years, from 1257, built her this church around the old San Giorgio, the school where Francis had learned to read and where his body had been kept before the basilica. They consecrated it in 1265, pink and white in stripes like the stone of Subasio, Gothic like the Upper Basilica but barer, and with three gigantic flying buttresses on the flank that hold it up above the valley. The Poor Clares of the first monastery, cloistered, are still behind it.
What to see
The Crucifix of San Damiano, first of all: the real one, the painted panel of the twelfth century that spoke to Francis telling him to repair his house, brought here by the nuns when they left San Damiano; it is in the oratory on the right, and there is always someone in front of it who does not move. In the same chapel of San Giorgio the frescoes by Pace di Bartolo and Puccio Capanna, and behind the grille the relics: Clare's tunic and cloak, her hair, a sandal and a tunic of Francis, the deacon's alb she embroidered for him.
In the right transept the panel by the Master of Santa Chiara, of 1283, with the saint standing and eight stories of her life around her, the first portrait known, painted thirty years after her death by someone who may have seen her; in the vault above the altar the frescoes with the pairs of female saints on gold. Then you go down into the crypt, remade in neo-Gothic, where behind a grille you see the body of Clare, found in 1850 under the altar after six centuries, with the skeleton intact, and beside it that of Agnes, the sister who followed her. Outside, the square is a balcony over the Spoleto valley, with the basilica of San Francesco at the end.
Visiting
The basilica is on Piazza Santa Chiara, in the upper part of town, ten minutes' walk from San Francesco along the corso; free entry, with church hours and a lunch closure, silence requested and suitable clothing. The Crucifix and the crypt are always visible during opening hours. Half an hour, more on the feast day, the eleventh of August, when Assisi dresses up for her.
Our editors' tip
Do San Damiano first, a kilometre below the walls, in an olive grove: it is where Clare lived and where the Crucifix stood, and seeing the empty niche and then climbing up here to find it is the right order. Then, in the crypt, look at the stone sarcophagus above the little shrine, reached by a small stair: it is the tomb where she lay for six centuries without anyone knowing where.