Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli

Down on the plain about 4 km below Assisi, this gigantic basilica is the seventh-largest church in Christendom and the obvious landmark you pass on the way in by train. It was built specifically to house the Porziuncola, the tiny chapel where St. Francis founded the order; the small chapel sits incongruously inside the vast nave, dwarfed by the surrounding architecture but unchanged in itself.

Also inside is the Chapel of the Transito, where Francis died on 3 October 1226, and a museum with reliquaries and works by Bernardino Pinturicchio. The basilica is a major pilgrimage destination on the Festa del Perdono (1–2 August). Closer to the town centre than you might think — a 7-minute bus or 40-minute downhill walk from the old town.

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A story
Inside the enormous late-Renaissance basilica sits the Porziuncola — the tiny stone chapel that Francis restored with his own hands and where the Franciscan order was effectively founded. The big church was built around the little one in 1569 to protect it from pilgrim crowds.