Where did Saint Francis of Assisi grow up and live?

📍Piazza del Comune, 06081 Assisi PG, Umbria, Italy

“I was born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone around 1181 in Assisi, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. I grew up enjoying the pleasures that wealth provided until illness, imprisonment, and a voice in the ruined church of San Damiano changed everything. I gave away my father's goods, stripped off my fine clothes in the public square, and walked out of Assisi with nothing. I lived among lepers, begged for stone to rebuild churches, and gathered a community of brothers who lived as I did — in absolute poverty, by their own labour, preaching the gospel. The Umbrian hills and the birds and the wolves were my companions. I called all creatures brother and sister. The Assisi hills gave me a landscape worthy of the conversion that happened within them.”

👍 LovedThe Umbrian landscape and the creatures that inhabited it. The absolute poverty that clarified everything. The community of brothers who shared the vocation.

👎 DislikedMy father's fury at the conversion. The church's ambivalence about a movement it could not fully control. The illness of my final years and the stigmata.

Map showing where Saint Francis of Assisi lived — Piazza del Comune, 06081 Assisi PG, Umbria, Italy

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Saint Francis of Assisi's home at Piazza del Comune, 06081 Assisi PG, Umbria, Italy

📍 Street view today

Sources: Thompson, A. Francis of Assisi: A New Biography (2012), Cornell University Press; Bonaventure. Major Life of Saint Francis (1263)