S. Francesco al Prato.
To the right of the Oratory of S. Bernardino is the immense, but quite ruined, church and convent of S. Francesco al Prato. S. Francesco, more even than S. Domenico and so many of the churches of Perugia, is only the skeleton of a once beautiful body from which the silken robes, the jewels, even the flesh, have been torn rudely off by men and time. The church was built in 1230, in the form of a Latin cross with a single nave. But from the moment it was built, owing to the crumbling nature of the soil, and the heavy and overweighted style of its architecture, it was threatened with immediate destruction, so that in 1737 it fell in almost completely.
Throughout the history of Perugia we read of great events which centred in S. Francesco, of great men who were buried there, artists who painted, and popes who blessed and prayed. Of all these former splendours, nothing remains beyond a carcase of stone walls. The pictures—the Raphael, the Pinturicchios and the Peruginos, with the exception of Bonfigli’s banner in the chapel of the Gonfalone,[83] and one interesting early fresco down in the crypt,—have been removed to the Pinacoteca and to other towns. Fortebraccio’s bones have gone to the museum, Fra Egidio’s tomb is in the church near the museum, and the roof has fallen in upon a rubbish heap of beams, and bricks, and mortar.