The Co-cathedral of the SS. Salvatore in Montalcino

Church of S. Francesco

In the lower part of the city is the church of another major mendicant order which found a warm welcome in Montalcino, the church of San Francesco.
It was built in the thirteenth century in place of the church of Sant’Angelo in Castelvecchio and was then donated by the abbot of Sant’Antimo to the Franciscans for the care of souls in Montalcino.
The interior is organized around a large hall sanctuary typical of the mendicant orders whose powerful preaching was attended by hundreds of listeners.
It was restored in the eighteenth century by Tommaso Paccagnini, but after Grand Duke Leopold suppressed the order, in the late eighteenth century it was set up as a hospital.
In the church are sixteenth-century frescoes by Vincenzo Tamagni, including stories from the life of the Virgin Mary, as well as sixteenth and seventeenth-century paintings by Ventura Salimbeni (Saint Simon Receiving the Scapular from the Virgin Mary), Alessandro Casolani (Allegory of the Immaculate Conception), and an early eighteenth-century Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints by Niccolò Lapi. Many other works from the church are now in the Civic and Diocesan Museum. Next to the church is the former convent of the Franciscan friars in Montalcino, enriched in the sixteenth century by a beautiful cloister and converted in subsequent centuries to hospital space.