About 4 km up Monte Subasio from Assisi, the Eremo delle Carceri is the hermitage where St. Francis and his earliest companions came to pray. The complex is small — a tiny stone chapel, a few wood-lined cells, the cave where Francis himself slept on bare rock — built into a steep wooded ravine. The contrast with the grand basilica below could hardly be sharper, and the visit gives a far better sense of what early Franciscan life actually looked like.
You can drive up or, much better, walk the marked path from the Porta dei Cappuccini (about 75 minutes uphill through holm-oak forest). Entry to the hermitage is free; visitors are asked to keep silence. The surrounding woods are part of the Monte Subasio Regional Park and offer cool walking even in high summer.