Piazza San Francesco and its churches

In the area where the square stands, formerly the center of the so-called "Lower Village", the workshops of the blacksmiths were concentrated, art for which Fratta was well known throughout central Italy. The area was originally outside the walls and was crossed by the road that led south, towards Perugia. Some of the most important churches in the city overlook the square. The Church of Santa Croce, built in 1610, designed by the Umbrian architect Filippo Fracassini, extending a chapel of the Augustinian fathers that existed as early as 1338. Restored entirely, it has been transformed into a civic museum and contains the famous Deposition from the Cross (1515) ) by Luca Signorelli, one of the most important works of the great Renaissance painter. The Church of San Francesco, built on Gothic structures probably around 1299, was restored and reopened for worship in 1966. It conserved a canvas by Pomarancio, now transferred to the adjacent Santa Croce Museum, and a valuable statue of S. Rocco attributable in Michelozzo Fiorentino. The Church of San Bernardino, built on an ancient oratory of the disciplines. Tradition has it that it was San Bernardino himself, in 1426, who founded the Congregation of the Good Jesus. Consecrated in 1556, over the course of time he underwent various interventions, to assume the current structure in 1768. Preserved, in the main altar, the painting by Muzio Fiori the Supper of the Apostles (1602), as well as a wooden statue of San Bernardino attributed to Vecchietta, perhaps from the 16th century. Here the famous Umbrian singer of the eighteenth century Domenico Bruni is buried. The church can be visited every Thursday.