San Francesco

St Francis, coming one day to the city of Bologna, all the inhabitants went out to meet him, and the crowd was so great that it was with much difficulty he made his way to the market−place, which was filled with men, women, and scholars. And St Francis, on arriving there, stood upon an elevated spot, and began to preach that which the Holy Spirit put into his mind to say; and he preached so wonderfully that he appeared to be an angel, not a man; and his words were like sharp arrows, which pierced through the hearts of those who listened to them. The Little Flowers of St Francis, XXVII

Lovely Gothic San Francesco was begun in 1236 when St Francis was still alive. Bologna provided one of the fastest-growing and keenest centres of the new order; by 1211, Bernardo di Quintavalle, Francis's first follower, had set up a modest convent called Santa Maria delle Pugliole. When Francis himself visited in 1222, interest soared. Pope Gregory IX himself gave his approval for a new more monumental complex for the growing order of Friars Minor.