Construction of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy, began in 1228, shortly after the canonization of St. Francis. The basilica consists of an upper and lower church, built on the hillside where St. Francis was buried. This double church became a major pilgrimage site and a masterpiece of Italian Gothic architecture, with frescoes by the most important artists of the 13th and 14th centuries, including Giotto and Cimabue.

The Basilica of St. Francis is central to the poetic tradition of the Franciscan order, inspiring the Laudes Creaturarum (Canticle of the Sun) by St. Francis himself, one of the earliest poems in the Italian vernacular. The basilica has been a pilgrimage site for poets from Dante to the present, and its frescoes have inspired ekphrastic poems celebrating the life of the saint and the ideals of poverty, humility, and love that he embodied.