Chiesa di San Francesco D'Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi's Church is an ancient place of worship located in the "Square of the Three Churches" in the Medieval village of Gerace. The monumental building was declared "Well Architectural National Interest" and is an important example of Gothic style in Calabria. The Church, built in 1252 on the ruins of an earlier Romanesque building, was part of a former convent of the thirteenth century, which remain well and part of the cloister. Between 1806 and 1897 the Church was used as a prison and suffered enormous damage. The structure seemed permanently impaired when, in 1951, work began on the restoration, which lasted for over two decades and allowed the recovered ancient splendor. The main facade, on which there is an imposing Gothic portal with pointed arches, with triple Arab-Norman archivolt motifs, is enriched by monadatura, capitals and a swastika representing the sun, in the eastern symbolism, it represents eternity. The interior, though sober, contains important elements of art and architecture, including the magnificent seventeenth-century high altar, polychrome marble inlays, which is one of the highest records of Calabrese Baroque; the triumphal arch of 1664, in Baroque style and decorated with inlaid polychrome marble, by the friar Bonaventura Perna; sarcophagus funerary of warrior Nicholas Ruffo (1372), by a disciple of the sculptor Tino Camaino. Among the few remains of the St. Mary de Jesu's Chapel, adjacent to the Church, they remain a Roman sarcophagus and the remains of two Gothic columns.
