Sanctuary of Greccio

The municipality of Greccio, a picturesque village embedded in the mountain and surrounded by dense vegetation, hosts the first Franciscan sanctuary that overlooks the Plain of Rieti. Known all over the world as the Franciscan Bethlehem, the Sanctuary is a powerful architectural complex that seems to rise from the bare rock. Its architectural structure consists of a Latin cross plan, a hexagonal apse and a splendid side façade enriched by Gothic monophores. The original nucleus of the Sanctuary is the Chapel of the Nativity, built in 1228 - the year of the canonization of the Saint - in a cave where, on the Christmas night of 1223, St. Francis, with the help of Messer Giovanni Velita, lord of Greccio, after pontifical authorization, represented for the first time in the history of Christianity the birth of Jesus, creating the first crib. The chapel consists of a small cave dug into the rock, characterized by a barrel vault with lowered arch. Below the medieval Church is the evocative Crypt of St. Francis.