Waking in Assisi we had a wonderful view across the valley from our balcony, with swifts (soon to arrive back home) flying around.
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The day began with a trip to the Basilica of St Francis, a glorious building built when St Francis was canonised, a mere 18 months after he had died. Since St Francis had responded to the call of Jesus from the cross in the church of St Damiano to reform his church and to bring Christianity back to its humble roots, the Friars had not wanted such a building, however the Pope agreed with the people and a wonderful church was therefore built. The inside has two levels, a gloriously richly decorated lower level, with the upper church containing frescos by Giotto. The upper level shows signs of wear and tear with signs of the earthquake of 1997 (if one knows where to look for it) wonderfully re-built in time for the millennium. Our tour of Assisi took in three further churches, two closely associated with the story of St Francis; in addition some of us visited the cathedral in Assisi.

The Monastery of St Damiano was the obvious next place to visit. Here the story gets complicated! The famous cross of St Damiano from which St Francis heard Jesus talk to him is no longer in the church of St Damiano (although there are replicas in all of the main churches in Assisi).  St Damiano became the home of the Order of the Poor Claires and (perhaps ironically) the Basilica of St Claire became the home of the original cross of St Damiano. The bones of St Claire are now in the Basilica of St Claire, although the body is preserved thanks to the help of Madame Tussauds, so you can imagine what this looks like. In fact, you will have to, since most of the churches in Assisi did not permit any internal photography. The other church in the area that we visited was the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels in Assisi. It was here that the young Francis of Assisi understood his vocation and renounced the world in order to live in poverty among the poor and thus started the Franciscan movement.

So the chronology of these four churches is as follows: Francis was baptised in the Cathedral (St Rufino), received his first communion in the Basilica of St Clare, heard the call of Jesus in the church of St Damiano, understood his calling in St Mary di Angelo and finally, after his death and canonisation, the Basilica to St Francis was built. I have therefore put the pictures in this order, not the order in which we visited them.
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