Church of San Francesco d’Assisi

One of the oldest Franciscan establishments in Calabria

Founded in the second half of the thirteenth century, the church was part of a much larger convent complex than the current one, which is contiguous to the left side front of the building. 

The current dimensions and configuration of the church probably depend on the renovation and extensions carried out in 1294, following by donation by King Charles II of Anjou in favor of the community of Franciscan friars to whom it had been assigned, to give them a chance to compensate for the damage suffered during the Vesper War. The only pointed access gate is certainly from the 14th century, located on the right side of the church and surrounded by an articulated frame with several decorated bands. 

In the church, which has a hall layout, the few furnishings and monuments that survived the radical restorations carried out in the twentieth century stand out. Namely, the fourteenth-century tomb of Nicola Ruffo and two seventeenth-century works in polychrome marble that are the altar of the tribune and the chapel of Don Andrew of Aragon de Ayerbe. 

On the left side wall, next to the entrance arch to the presbytery, there is a view of a chapel located at a lower level, perhaps used as a sacristy, where an eroded coat of arms of the Caracciolo family appears on the vault. 

However, the entrance to the now destroyed chapel of Santa Maria del Gesù, built in the fifteenth century next to the right side front of the church at the behest of Countess Caterina Concublet and restored in the sixteenth century on the initiative of bishop Vincenzo Bonardi, is walled up.