How to visit
- Where
- Via Basilicius · City of San Marino
- Church admission
- Free
- Art Gallery
- State Museums ticket. Tariffs on museidistato.sm
- Position
- Southern entrance to the historic centre, next to the St. Francis Gate
The oldest sanctuary
The church and the convent were founded together in 1361 by the Conventual Friars Minor, brothers of Francis of Assisi who reached the Titano a century after the death of the order's founder. The original settlement stood at Murata, outside the city walls, but the continuous raids by the Malatesta of Rimini made the area unsafe. Pope Clement VII authorised the relocation inside the fortified perimeter, in line with the southern gate that later took the name of the friars.
The St. Francis Gate, built in the same year 1361, is one of the few well-preserved original elements of the city walls. The church appears today in the neoclassical forms given by the restorations between the 17th and 18th centuries. Only the facade and the three-arched portico were brought back to their original lines by architect Gino Zani (1882-1964), a leading figure in the historical restoration of San Marino in the early 20th century.
Works not to be missed
On the high altar stands the 14th-century wooden crucifix, probably from the original church at Murata. For centuries the convent housed the Sammarinese Studio, an institution that long anticipated the present State University founded in 1985. The side walls keep paintings from the 15th to the 17th century by local artists and the Riminese school, today restored and integrated into the museum route.
From the cloister to the gallery
On 15 March 1966 the Museum and the St. Francis Art Gallery opened in the two loggias of the cloister. The collection gathers works of the 15th and 16th centuries with a selection of local authors and Italian schools. Among the best known pieces is a portrait of Saint Francis attributed to Guercino, the Bolognese painter of the seventeenth century. The route also includes sacred vestments, liturgical objects and assets connected to the history of the Franciscan order on the Titano.
«The Franciscan cloister of San Marino is a quiet hall in the thick of the city: its arches count six centuries of prayers and silences.»
Those who want to explore the religious and artistic life of the Republic find in the monuments of the historic centre a natural route: the Basilica of Saint Marinus and the St. Quirinus Church complete the ecclesiastical triangle of the chief town together with the Monastery of St. Clare.