Chiesa di San Francesco

On Piazza San Francesco, Foligno's Franciscan church guards the city's best-loved shrine: the tomb of Angela da Foligno, merchant's wife turned mystic and teacher of theology, canonized in 2013. A thirteenth-century fabric, remodelled in neoclassical form in 1796, frames the urn associated with her cult.

Why it matters

Angela da Foligno — the Franciscan tertiary who died in Foligno on 4 January 1309 and whose writings earned her the reputation of a teacher of theology — is buried here. The church is known as the Santuario di Santa Angela, associated with the devotion that followed her canonization by Pope Francis on 9 October 2013. The regional portal lists the church among Foligno's essential sights for precisely this reason: the remains of the famous mystic, born near the present-day Porta Romana, rest within. The building itself tells the Franciscan story of an Umbrian commune, from its thirteenth-century origins to a late eighteenth-century remodelling.

What to notice

The second altar on the left holds the urn containing St Angela's body. The church's interior reflects its long devotional and artistic history. The fabric grew in the thirteenth century by incorporating the older church of San Matteo, whose chapel retains fourteenth-century frescoes — the oldest painting you will see here. A thorough transformation of 1796 to a design by the architect Andrea Vici gave the interior its present classical order, with the works completed only in the mid-nineteenth century. On the main altar hangs Pasquale Sarullo's painting of St Francis receiving the stigmata of 1856; canvases by Giuseppe Cades depicting the vision of Blessed Angelina and by Gaetano Gandolfi hang nearby. Two connected memories leave the building: a 1499 lunette by Pierantonio Mezzastris is now preserved in the city museum, and a sixteenth-century wooden reliquary of the saint is kept in the sacristy.

Context and history

The Franciscans reached Foligno within a generation of Francis's own time, and their church here rose in the thirteenth century on a sacred building dedicated to Santa Maria, absorbing the neighbouring church of San Matteo as it grew. For centuries it was the city's principal mendicant church, its walls frescoed and its altars renewed after the Council of Trent. The remodelled interior of 1796 by Andrea Vici stripped the space to neoclassical lines, and work dragged on into the mid-1800s. Angela's cult grew steadily from her death in 1309: beatified in 1693 by Pope Innocent XII, she was canonized by Pope Francis on 9 October 2013. The equipollent canonization established the church's association with her sainthood and devotional tradition. The church forms part of Foligno's Franciscan heritage, which also includes the Oratorio della Nunziatella.