Audio Guide: St. Francis' Assisi Walking Tour (Self Guided), Assisi

Assisi’s identity as the city of Saint Francis began with a merchant’s son who seemed destined for anything but sainthood. Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone—later known as Francis—was born here in late 1181 or early 1182 into a prosperous cloth-trading family. As a young man, he delighted in fashionable clothes, music, feasting, and dreams of knighthood. Assisi was then a turbulent commune, frequently at odds with neighbouring Perugia. Francis fought in the conflict, was captured, and eventually returned home after a period of imprisonment and illness.

His change of direction came gradually. In 1205, while travelling south in pursuit of military glory, he turned back after experiencing a vision at Spoleto. At the decaying Church of Saint Damian below the town, early Franciscan accounts relate that Christ spoke to him from the crucifix and instructed him to repair the Church.

His decisive public break with his former life took place before the bishop of Assisi, when Francis renounced his inheritance and returned his clothes to his father. Later, at the Little Portion Chapel on the plain below Assisi, he heard the Gospel instructions given by Christ to the apostles and adopted a life of poverty and preaching. Companions soon gathered around him, and in 1209 he travelled to Rome, where Pope Innocent III gave oral approval to their way of life. Clare of Assisi joined the movement in 1212, and her community later settled at the Church of Saint Damian.

Francis travelled widely, but Assisi remained the geographical and spiritual centre of his story. In 1225, while staying at the Church of Saint Damian, he composed the Canticle of the Creatures. He died at the Little Portion Chapel on the evening of 3 October 1226.

Pope Gregory IX canonised Francis here on 16 July 1228. The city’s association with reconciliation gained renewed global significance in 1986, when Pope John Paul II gathered representatives of numerous religions here for a World Day of Prayer for Peace.

Begin your walk in the Upper Square of Saint Francis, where Norberto Proietti’s sculpture The Return of Francis, depicting a bowed horse and rider, recalls the young soldier’s humbled return to Assisi. Continue uphill through the medieval centre to the New Church and the Oratory of Little Saint Francis, traditionally associated with his birthplace. Then leave the town walls near New Gate and descend through the olive groves to the Church of Saint Damian, associated with his conversion and the call to “repair” the Church.

As you follow these places through Assisi, remember that the story began with a merchant’s son searching for worldly glory—and ended with a saint who found his purpose in humility, poverty, and peace.