St. Francis's pink stone hilltop — a UNESCO basilica town where Giotto painted and the olive groves never end
Assisi is a medieval hill town in Umbria and the birthplace of St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), founder of the Franciscan order and patron saint of Italy. The Basilica di San Francesco, a double-church built into the hillside immediately after Francis's death, contains Giotto's celebrated fresco cycle of the Life of St. Francis — one of the defining monuments of Western art. The entire town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and retains its pink Subasio stone façades, Romanesque churches, and medieval gate towers largely intact.
Assisi was a prosperous Roman municipium (Asisium) before Francis was born to a cloth merchant family and underwent a spiritual conversion after a period of captivity in Perugia around 1205. He founded the Franciscan order in 1209, and Pope Honorius III approved the order's rule in 1223. Construction of the Basilica began in 1228, two years after Francis's canonisation, and Cimabue and Giotto decorated it with frescoes that transformed Italian painting. A 1997 earthquake seriously damaged the basilica, collapsing part of the upper nave vault; the international restoration effort took eleven y…