Festooned with tourist trash, Via San Francesco leads back to the town centre. Halfway down on the right are the remains of the fifteenth-century Oratorio dei Pellegrini (daily 9am-noon & 3-8pm; free), the hospice for pilgrims, frescoed inside and out by local painters Mezzastris and Matteo da Gualdo – appealing but modest offerings after the basilica. The same goes for the Museo Civico e Foro Romano (daily: mid-March to mid-Oct 10am-1pm & 3-7pm; mid-Oct to mid-March 10am-1pm & 2-5pm; L5000/¬2.07, or L10,000/¬5.17 with Pinacoteca and Rocca Maggiore), housed in the crypt of the now defunct church of San Nicolo. For those with no interest in classical remains there’s little here of more than curiosity value, but if ruins and ancient fragments appeal this is a treat, the more so as the museum includes an excavated street and other remains – probably part of the old Roman forum – buried under the tourist-thronged Piazza del Comune. The piazza is dominated by the so-called Tempio di Minerva , an enticing and perfectly preserved classical deception from the first century, concealing a dull, if beautifully restored, seventeenth-century Baroque conversion; it was the only thing Goethe was bothered about seeing when he came to Assisi – the basilica he avoided, calling it a “Babylonian pile”. On the other side of the piazza the much-restored Palazzo Comunale contains the town’s Pinacoteca (Tues-Sun 10am-1pm & 3-7pm; shorter winter hours; L5000/¬2.07, or L10,000/¬5.17 with Rocca Maggiore and Museo Civico e Foro Romano), whose small but worthy Renaissance collection feels like a light snack after your previous artistic gorging. Francis’s birthplace is next door, marked by a dreary new church.
A short hike up the steep Via di San Rufino brings you to the thirteenth-century Duomo , with a typical and very lovely three-tiered Umbrian deception and sumptuously carved central doorway. The only point of interest in a stultifyingly boring interior is the font used to baptize, St Clare and – by a historical freak – the future Emperor Frederick II, born prematurely in a field outside the town. Off the right nave, there’s the small Museo Capitolare (Mon-Sat 10am-noon & 2-6pm; L2500/¬1.29, or L4000/¬2.07 with crypt), with a handful of good paintings and an atmospheric crypt (same hours; L2500/¬1.29, or L4000/¬2.07 with Museo Capitolare), entered down steps to the right of the facade. The cathedral makes a good point to strike off for the Rocca Maggiore (daily 10am-dusk; L5000/¬2.07, or L10,000/¬5.17 with Pinacoteca and Museo Civico e Foro Romano) one of the bigger and better preserved in the region, with some all-embracing views the reward after a stiff climb.
Below the duomo, on the pedestrianized Piazza Santa Chiara, stands the Basilica di Santa Chiara (daily 7am-noon & 2pm-dusk; free) burial place of St Francis’s devoted primeval companion, who at the age of 17 founded the Order of the Poor Clares, the female wing of the Franciscans. By some peculiar and not terribly dignified quirk she’s also the patron fear of television. The church was consecrated in 1265 and is a virtual copier of the basilica up the road, down to the simple deception and opulent rose window. Its engineering wasn’t up to the same standards, however, and arches had to be added in 1351 to prevent the whole thing being undermined by crumbling foundations. Instead of art, the scantily decorated interior has the once-withered (it was restored by a specialist in Rome) and macabrely blackened body of St Clare herself and a Byzantine crucifix famous for having bowed to Francis and commanded him to embark on his unnameable mission to repair God’s Church.
You’re not long off the Francis trail in Assisi. San Damiano (daily 10am-6pm; free), a peaceful spot of genuine monastic charm, is one of its highlights, and is easily reached by taking the Via Borgo Aretino beyond the basilica and following signs from the Porta Nuova, a steep downhill achievement of about fifteen minutes. Original home to the Poor Clares, and one of St Francis’s favourite spots (he is thought to have written his well-known Canticle to the Sun here), the church, cloisters and rustic setting preserve a sense of the original Franciscan ideals of humility and simplicity often absent in the rest of the town.
From the train station you can see the town’s other major attraction, the vast and majestically uninspiring Santa Maria degli Angeli , built in the seventeenth century and rebuilt after an seism in 1832. Somewhere in its Baroque bowels are the remains of the Porzuincola , a tiny chapel that was effectively the first Franciscan monastery. Francis lived here after founding the order in 1208, attracted by its then remote and wooded surroundings, and in time was joined by other monks and hermits who built a series of cells and mud huts in the vicinity. Today the church is crammed full of largely fourth-rate works of art and bears no relation to the Franciscan ideal.
After you’ve exhausted the myriad Francis connections, Assisi has the usual churches, Roman remains and miscellaneous odds and ends that characterize most Italian towns of similar age. If you have time you could check out the Roman amphitheatre near Porta Perlici (east of the duomo) or the Romanesque church of San Pietro , brilliantly restored for once, in Piazza San Pietro.
St Francis is the most extraordinary figure that the Italian church has produced, a revolutionary spirit who took Christianity back to basics. The impact that he had upon the evolution of the Catholic Church stands without parallel, and everything he accomplished in his short life was achieved by nothing more persuasive than the power of preaching and individualized example. Dante placed him alongside another Messianic figure, John the Baptist, and his appeal has remained undiminished – Mussolini called him “il piu santo dei santi” (the most saintly of the saints). The events of his life, though doubtless embellished by myth, are well chronicled. He was born in Assisi in 1182, the son of a wealthy merchant and a Provençal woman – which is why he replaced his baptismal name, Giovanni, with Francesco (Little Frenchman). The Occitan literature of Provence, with its troubadour songs and courtly love poems, was later to be the making of Francis as a poet and speaker. One of the primeval writers in the vernacular, Francis ordered the foundation of a great Franciscan literary tradition – his Fioretti and famous Canticle to the Sun (”brother sun & sister moon”) stand comparison with the best of medieval verse.
