Known throughout the world as the Franciscan Bethlehem, the Sanctuary, which is located at 635 meters above sea level, on a steep slope of the mountains that border the North West Conca Reatina, is a powerful architectural complex that seems to rise from the bare rock and numerous are the treasures of art and faith kept within its ancient walls: from the fresco of giottesca school of the Chapel of the Crib, to the rock on which St. Francis, in the celebration of the Christmas of 1223 deposed the Simulacrum of Jesus, from the primitive dormitory of the monks, where it is conserved intact the cell of the Saint, to the first Church dedicated to S. Francis after his canonization in 1228, from the suggestive wooden dormitory of the thirteenth century of St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Minister General of the Order, to the wooden choir of the seventeenth century which preserves a lectern with an ancient choir, from the small church in which there is a sixteenth-century copy of the portrait of St. Francis, to the modern church built in 1959. Francis, to the modern Church built in 1959 on the project of the Architect Alberto Carpiceci that preserves interesting cribs fruit of the sensibility of real artists (Luigi Venturini and Lorenzo Ferri) but more often of the simple spontaneity that we all carry inside.
The interior of the church takes light from the polychrome stained glass windows of Father Alberto Farina depicting scenes and characters related to the life of St. Francis.
Of particular interest are the bronze entrance portals made by sculptors Lino Agnini and Albano Poli.
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