Temple of St. Francis

In 1222, Francis of Assisi, traveling in southern Italy, preached in the town of Gaeta, where he stayed a few days at the invitation of the townspeople and performed a number of miracles. There he founded a small convent with an adjoining chapel, located outside the then city walls (the circuit of which had been enlarged the same year at the behest of Frederick II up to the present Piazza Conca); during the construction of which a carpenter, crushed by a beam, was killed. The saint, informed of the incident, drew a sign of the cross on the dead man, and he, called by name, resurrected. According to another source, the resurrected dead man was a bricklayer crushed by a boulder. The complex, once completed, consisted of the small church, devoid of any particular decoration, and the few cells of the friars, including the one in which the founder had slept; the church was dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption in 1255; the entire structure underwent initial restoration in 1275 at the behest of Charles I of Anjou. ), Charles II of Anjou (on the left, who began the construction of the church in 1285) and Ferdinand II of Bourbon (on the right, who restored the church in the 1850s). With the growing number of vocations and because of the remarkable devotion shown by the people of Gaeta, at the same time as the expansion of the convent, the construction of a new and larger church began in 1285, dedicated to Francis of Assisi, who had been canonized in 1228 by Pope Gregory IX; the building was financed by Charles II of Anjou and his son Louis, a Franciscan and Bishop of Toulouse, who visited the site in 1295. its external appearance is clearly visible in Frans Vervloet's painting View of Gaeta on the occasion of the blessing given by Pius IX on December 8, 1848 (1850). Over the centuries, it was enriched by Gaeta's most important noble families, who had their own aristocratic chapel inside it (among them the Gattola family, who had six burials there, the Guastaferri family, and the Gaetani family). Among the numerous funerary monuments was that of Cardinal Bartolomeo Uliari, from Padua, papal legate in Gaeta to Ladislaus I of Naples from 1393 to 1396, with a sarcophagus supported by two marble lions, later used as the base of the fountain in the center of the cloister of the convent. The church was home until 1806 to the Royal Mount of Piety of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli, the existence of which is attested from 1697 and which had two chaplaincies in San Francesco. In 1742 the convent numbered 35 friars, of whom 20 were professed and 15 were lay brothers. In 1809, with the suppression of religious orders ordered by Joachim Murat, king of Naples, the convent of St. Francis in Gaeta was also seized and used as a military hospital, and the complex fell into neglect, which continued after the restoration. The church, in particular, which had already been damaged by an earthquake in 1764 that caused the bell tower to collapse, was in a state of decay; this was noticed even by Pope Pius IX, in voluntary exile in Gaeta from November 1848 to September of the following year, who called for a restoration of the ancient structure. In this he urged Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, who implemented and financed the rebuilding of the church. The project was entrusted to Giacomo Guarinelli, a major and commander of the Engineer Corps, as well as an architect. The dedication, scheduled for October 4, 1885, did not take place until October 9, 1927. The church was restored again in 1927 (on that occasion the upper part of the facade was deprived of the dense relief decoration formed by a series of quatrefoils) and entrusted to the Salesians of Don Bosco; in 1929 the Salesians founded, in the former convent, the "Don Bosco Oratory" and remained there until 1992. During World War II, on Sept. 8, 1943, a bomb hit the right choir loft of the church (but did not damage the rest of the building), and in the years 1951–1952 restoration work was necessary, which was followed by the reopening of the temple. Restoration work began in 2004 (the construction site was inaugurated on February 3 of that year in the presence of the then Archbishop of Gaeta Pier Luigi Mazzoni) and the church was reopened on October 4, 2008 with a Eucharistic celebration presided over by Archbishop Fabio Bernardo D'Onorio. In October-November 2018, scenes from Michela Andreozzi's film Brave ragazze (2019) were filmed in the church and former convent. == Description ==

Measurements and dimensions Exterior The exterior, much like the interior, is characterized by the rich nineteenth-century plastic decoration in neo-Gothic style, designed by Giacomo Guarinelli, which covers the ancient Gothic structure of the 13th-14th centuries. The elevation is prominent and traces the internal structure of three naves with as many sections separated by rectangular buttresses, each of which ends with a dome with an octagonal base. The lower part of the façade (corresponding to the internal distance between the floor and the key of the vaults of the aisles) is in travertine with decoration in pointed blind arches; the upper part, on the other hand, has a smooth wall surface in light-colored plaster, dating from the 1927 restoration (in fact, it was previously made up of a dense network of relief quatrefoils in stucco). In the lower part, while each of the two lateral naves has a slender ogival single lancet window with wimperg, the central nave has a portal, also in travertine, with a deep spandrel richly decorated in bas-relief with floral motifs. It is surmounted by a high wimperg decorated with a high relief by Salvatore Irdi depicting the allegory of the Restoration of the Papacy and surmounted by a statue by Gennaro Calì depicting St. Francis of Assisi. On either side of the door, under a canopy, are marble statues of Charles II of Anjou (left) and Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, both by Gennaro De Crescenzo. Each of them rests on a high polygonal base with an inscription in Latin recalling the ruler's commitment to the Gaetan Church: {{text and translation Neapolis rex templum cuius divus ipsa Franciscus ab Assisiis heic fundamenta iederat absolvendum duravit Seraphicum Patrem admiratus qui apud Caietam praeter cetera miracula fabrum lignarium decidua trabe extinctum e sandapila qua efferebatur in vitam signo crucis populum catervatim plaudente revocavit. In axis with the portal, behind the statue of St. Francis, is a circular rose window about 5.8 meters in diameter, closed by a polychrome stained glass window with aniconic subject. At the top of the facade, above a pinnacle with an octagonal base, is an iron cross. In the upper part of the counterfacade wall, below the rose window and in axis with the latter and the portal, is the canvas depicting St. Francis showing the Stigmata: this is a copy made by Giuseppe Sabbione in 1887 of a painting by Michele De Napoli from 1851, which had been designed to be placed above the church's high altar, but since the design of the latter's altarpiece had been changed, it could not be placed in the building. Each of the two side aisles ends with a wall behind which is an altar in polychrome marble, with neo-Gothic decoration of small arches, mullioned windows and rose windows, as well as a tabernacle whose cover consists of a tall octagonal spire. Originally, the two altars were surmounted by as many altarpieces, which were removed when the church was closed in 1998: on the altar of the Blessed Sacrament is Jesus on the Cross (by Gennaro Ruo); on the altar of the Most Holy Sorrows is the Virgin of Sorrows (by Angelo Scetta). The right altar was later dedicated to St. John Bosco and adorned with an altarpiece depicting the dedicatee. The main nave, compared to the two smaller ones, in addition to the sixth bay (which, compared to the previous ones, is shallower as it corresponds to the ancient apse of the thirteenth-century church) has another one, formerly used as a presbytery, whose floor is placed at a higher level than the hall and is connected to it by a series of steps. The room, covered with a cross vault decorated with the coats of arms of the royal family, is lit not by two single-lancet windows, but by two rose windows, below which open, with three pointed arches, two women's galleries: the one on the left, with independent access from the outside, was used as a royal box, while the one on the right (destroyed by a bomb during World War II, on September 8, 1943, and later rebuilt without, however, restoring its decorations) as a chancel. The chancel ends with the 19th-century apse, whose plan consists of five sides of an octagon, outside of which is a two-story vaulted corridor. Its four side walls were originally adorned with as many Baroque canvases, now partly in the Diocesan Museum, partly in Gaeta Cathedral: Girolamo Imparato's Virgin of the Assumption (16th century), Francesco Solimena's Rest on the Flight into Egypt (18th century), Circumcision of Jesus and Adoration of the Magi (both by the Neapolitan school, 17th century). In the central one is a niche, with a travertine statue of Christ the Redeemer enthroned, by the d'Annibale brothers, surmounted by a sumptuous neo-Gothic ciborium. Under the apsidal arch is the high altar, in finely carved stucco with rich neo-Gothic architectural decoration in relief. Above the mensa, in the center, is the tabernacle, surmounted by a baldachin with a high cusp with an octagonal base. In the original plan, above this altar was to be a canvas by Michele De Napoli, a copy of which is located on the counterfacade. Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies would have wished to endow the church with a three-keyboard organ similar to the one in the basilica of San Francesco di Paola in Naples; the latter had recently been built by organ builder Quirico Gènnari (originally from Rovigo) and had about 4,000 pipes (it was destroyed between 1944 and 1945 and was not subsequently rebuilt). Guarinelli, in the project for the church of San Francesco, also designed the case that was to enclose the instrument: it would have been located on the right women's gallery (which was actually later used as a choir loft), and would have been built in the neo-Gothic style, an unprecedented design in Italian organ history. == See also ==