The Franciscan presence in the city had to be quite early and linked at first to a small church, Santa Maria extra muros, which a fifteenth-century document says consecrated in 1233. Unfortunately, nothing is visible from this primitive construction: the church was radically rebuilt and dedicated to Saint Francis in the 13th century.

Today's church of San Francesco, located inside the village of Tagliacozzo, is therefore the second factory, completed around 1270. The Convent, in which a precious illuminated missal of the mid thirteenth century is preserved, develops around a quadrangular cloister with porticoes. It was built in the early seventeenth century and is accessed through a door in whose barrel vault was frescoed the family tree of the various Franciscan families, formed by twenty branches with their inscriptions. Considered one of the most complete of all Franciscan stories, it was painted in 1608, as we read at the base of it. The plan of the cloister, slightly trapezoidal, is surrounded by a porch with cross vaults and square pillars. In the centre, a tank was excavated and a well built. On the walls of the portico were decorated the lunettes with a wonderful description of the life of St. Francis, also this complete with episodes and very detailed in the representations.

To learn more: http://www.tagliacozzoturismo.it/portale/?package=chiesa-e-convento-di-s-francesco