In 1926, it was celebrated the seventh centenary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, a very important anniversary in Mugello, a land where the Franciscan Third Order had a deep-rooted presence. This monumental shrine was built as part of the numerous initiatives taken in Borgo San Lorenzo for that occasion, and erected in the religious heart of the town, between the parish church of San Lorenzo and the sixteenth-century Dominican monastery of Santa Caterina. It was inaugurated on 4 October 1926 and its construction is entirely due to the Chini Manufacture and its collaborators.
It consists of a niche covered with highly decorative tiles, with the ceramic statue of San Francesco at the centre. The wall is decorated with paintings, the wolf and the lamb, and ceramics depicting above all the coats of arms of the most important families in the area; the complex is covered with a roof in ceramic tiles and a decorated wrought iron lamp. Probably, this artefact replaced a First World War monument and it still remains today its small wrought iron gate, also referable to the Chini Manufacture for the presence of the characteristic decoration with broken lines.
© Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello
