Church of St Francesco

The district of Borgo Vecchio is a wonderful setting for one of the most prominent monuments in Montone: The Church of St. Francis with its annexed convent. The church is located on the top of one of the two hills forming the center of the village of Montone, overlooking the valley.
It features a single-nave layout with a slightly raised presbytery and a polygonal apse enriched by a beautiful arched central window and two lateral windows.
The roof of the nave is made up of wooden beams while the apse is covered by a lunette reinforced by ribs.
The gabled facade, made of thin rows of irregularly hewn stone, is preceded by a seventeenth century-style portico.
The entrance door, built by Antonio Bencivenni da Mercatello in 1514, is surmounted by a simple and sober rose window. The apse is enriched by a carved and painted wooden choir dating back to the late fifteenth century. On the walls you can admire interesting frescoes with votive representations as well as other works and furnishing from other religious buildings in the area. In the first altar on the left you can see the fresco commissioned to the painter Bartolomeo Caoprali da Braccio Fortebraccio, St. Anthony of Padua between the Baptist and the Archangel Raphael with Tobiolo, signed and dated 1491.
Traces of further paintings have been found all along the walls, which can be considered a sign of diffusion of the late-Gothic culture in the area in the first quarter of the fifteenth century.
The apse houses a cycle of frescoes by Antonio Alberti from Ferrara, sixteenth century, representing the stories of St. Francis.
Built in the fifteenth-sixteenth century according to the typical canons of “minor” monastic organizations, the church underwent several restorations over time, although they did not compromise its original structure.
After the clergy abolished convents in 1810, this church has not been regularly officiated anymore, resulting in a state of disrepair of the whole complex.
Restoration works carried out in the second half of the twentieth century restored the original look of the church by opening a small double lancet window on the north-east of the apse, reopening the large mullioned window to the bottom and closing two rectangular windows on the south side. Now the building is owned by the Municipality of Montone, which sponsored its final restoration and destined it to host a local museum.
Two of the magnificent artworks that used to be kept here are now at Buckingham Palace and at the National Gallery of London: The Holy Virgin on a throne with Child and Saints by Berto di Giovanni and the Holy Virgin in Glory by Luca Signorelli.
What is left are the frescoes by Bartolomeo Caporali painted for the votive altar of Fortebracci and a gouache painting representing the Madonna del Soccorso (the municipal Banner) ascribed to the same author and representing Montone how it used to be at the time at the bottom. The magnificent walnut door is an inlay work by Antonio Bencivenni da Mercatello (1519).