Ingresso degli Affreschi - Tomba di Giulietta

The Museum of Frescoes ‘Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle’ stands on the site of a convent complex whose origins date back to the 13th century.

The original church of San Francesco al Corso was indeed built in 1230, and along with the adjoining convent, it housed a community of Conventual Franciscans. When the friars moved to the more prestigious location of San Fermo Maggiore in 1257, the nuns from the monastery of Santa Maria di Zevio took their place here. In 1366, the few remaining nuns accepted the Benedictine rule, but in 1447 the now-abandoned convent was suppressed and merged with that of Santo Spirito. A century had to pass before communal life flourished again within these walls. In 1548, the complex was designated to host the converted women and unmarried girls that the nearby monastery of Santissima Trinità could no longer accommodate. These women (former prostitutes, ill-fated wives, abandoned wives, and girls without dowries) were therefore called Franceschine. In 1624, a lightning bolt struck the powder magazine in the nearby Torre della Paglia, along the ancient city walls. The terrible explosion that followed destroyed or severely damaged many surrounding buildings; the church and part of the convent of San Francesco were rebuilt from the ground up in the forms that they still retain today. This centuries-old story comes to a halt at the beginning of the 19th century, when, following the Napoleonic decrees of the Kingdom of Italy, many monasteries were suppressed and seized by the state. The complex of the Franceschine shared this fate and was partly used for military purposes and partly to accommodate charitable institutions. The subsequent abandonment and damage caused by the bombings of World War II endangered its very survival. Fortunately, in the 1960s, a greater awareness of cultural heritage preservation led to the restoration of the church and convent and the decision to transform them into a museum. In 1973, a museum dedicated to Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle was inaugurated there.