Saint Francis

The places of Francis’ journey

Two years after the death of Francis of Assisi on October 3, 1226, the cornerstone of the new basilica named after him was laid. The construction, destined to continue well into the 13th century, saw the work of some of the greatest painters of the time, from Cimabue to Giotto, from Pietro Lorenzetti to Simone Martini. And it was above all thanks to Giotto, an unsurpassed interpreter of the saint’s life, that the new humanity of the Franciscan message found its most eloquent expression in images, together with the invention of a distinct pictorial language inspired by visible reality. There is no place in Umbria where the story of Francis and his movement has not left traces: from the figurative works, which abound in many of the region’s churches, to the places where the saint’s very life was consummated. In addition to the numerous hermitages, places of prayer, from the Carceri in Assisi to the Sacro Speco in Narni, the entire region is marked by the presence of Franciscan settlements, often founded by Francis’s first disciples.

The city’s architecture, between the sacred and the profane

The grafting of the new Gothic language onto Romanesque forms found two exceptional models in Umbria: the basilica of Assisi itself, an architectural paradigm for the construction of similar buildings in the region, and, at the beginning of the 14th century, the cathedral of Orvieto with Lorenzo Maitani’s marvelous façade, inspired by Sienese models. But it is in the medieval square that Umbria’s municipal government redesigned the spaces of civic life with an urban planning expertise uncommon in its expressive power and design prowess. The physiognomy of the medieval square is characterized by the coexistence of symbols of political and religious power: the cathedral, the supreme manifestation of the dominion of the sacred, and the civic palace, intended to represent the new authority of municipal representation. From the Piazza in Perugia, overlooked by the cathedral with its unfinished façade and the imposing Palazzo dei Priori, visually connected by the fountain decorated with sculptures by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, to the Piazza in Todi, which in an exceptionally regular fashion accommodates the three buildings of the civil magistrates (del Popolo, del Capitano, and dei Priori) along with the spectacular cathedral and the adjoining bishop’s palace; and finally to the Piazza in Gubbio, one of the most daring urban planning projects of the Middle Ages, intended to house the Palazzo dei Consoli, positioned above the city and in relation to the “Platea Communis” which, a little higher up the hill, houses the cathedral.