In 1997 an earthquake killed people inside the basilica while they were working to protect it, part of a disaster that also fractured centuries-old frescoes into thousands of fragments.
The 1997 collapse
A series of earthquakes struck Umbria in September 1997, and an aftershock caused a section of the basilica's vaulted ceiling to collapse while restoration officials and religious personnel were inside inspecting earlier damage, killing four people, including two Franciscan friars and two heritage officials, and destroying large sections of fresco, some attributed to the workshop of Cimabue.
Rebuilding from fragments
Restorers spent years afterward piecing together shattered fresco fragments using photographic records and computer-assisted matching to reconstruct as much of the damaged decoration as possible, a painstaking recovery effort that returned much, though not all, of the basilica's ceiling to public view.
A movement built on giving everything away
Beyond the building's artistic and structural history, Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan order on a radical commitment to poverty, renouncing his family's wealth and instructing his followers to own nothing individually, a theological stance that shaped the order's identity so thoroughly that later disputes within Franciscan history frequently centred on exactly how strictly that original poverty commitment should still be interpreted.