The Church of St. Francis is the most popular church of Urbino. Its origin dates back to the first moments of Western monasticism. It was a Benedictine abbey before it became a Franciscan church in 1286. Built in the Romanesque style with only one nave, it was expanded with two additional naves in 1742, as can be seen presently.

In the thirteenth century, the cloister was added as a burial place for the Counts and important figures of Urbino which eventually was replaced by the current “Piazza delle Erbe”.

The Church of St. Francis is a monument of great value. Among the paintings can be found the Trinity and Saints by Cesare Maggeri , a fragment of a fresco, Christ Crucified, by the Salimbeni brothers and St. Francis of Assisi , a famous work by Federico Barocci.

The gothic Paltroni chapel at the base of the bell tower contains a sculpture of the “Pietà”, in a Northern Germanic style from the mid-fifteenth century. On the right of the presbytery can be found the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, which was transformed from an originally octagonal plan to its present rectangular form. The portal was sculpted and decorated by Constantino Trappola, the most illustrious of the local stonemasons from Sant’Ippolito, at the beginning of the sixteenth century.