Entered the city through Porta Fra 'Giocondo and go along Via St. Anthony of Padua is reached Piazza San Francesco, on which stands the great church of San Francesco, one of the architectural jewels of the city.
It is a brick building, dating from the mid-1200, whose architecture is a moment of transition from the Romanesque and early Gothic. The exterior is rhythm and single by paraste that emphasizes the verticality.
According to the historical, a first group of monks, appointed by Pope Innocent III to Treviso to take the prestigious Government of the Inquisition (newly created), arrived in the capital of Marca probably as early as 1216. The building was erected with the help of Municipality and many city families, decided to buy the goodwill of the Franciscans through donations that enabled the Church to complete and embellished with paintings, altars and funerary monuments, almost totally lost during the suppression orders Religious decided by Napoleon in 1806.
So began the sad events that led to the demolition of the convent, which was equipped with two cloisters, and the complete breakdown of the Church, divided into three levels, was first used as a military barracks, then a stable and warehouse. Only a century later it was launched a radical restoration work to which competition across national and who allowed the reopening to the cult in 1928, under the conduction of Friars Minor Conventual.
You enter the Church, can be seen on the bezel of the portal, just projecting, a fresco attributed to Marco in Venice (1235 ca.). The interior of the Church, grandiose, the bare brick walls and bathed in soft light, has a single aisle, covered by a wooden ceiling (fully rebuilt) to pentalobata hull resting on modiglioni suggests that the idea of the vault of heaven . From the center will have two arches to everyone ample sixth. The small aisle on the right result from the merger of side chapels built at different times. The left wall of the nave is dominated by a gigantic figure of St. Christopher (Roman-Byzantine work fine'200).
On the back wall of the left transept was recomposed in 1935 the Tomb of Pietro Alighieri, the son of Dante, who died suddenly during his stay in Treviso in 1364. Beyond the transept open five chapels apse, which has the highest form semiottagonale and is crowned by a time with the four Evangelists sails (of unknown student, perhaps Bohemian, to Tomaso da Modena). Adjacent chapel dell'Immacolata (left of the presbytery) filed a beautiful fresco by Tomaso da Modena (Madonna with Child and Seven Saints, 1350 ca.), Of refined elegance and gothic fascinating choice of colors.
In the second chapel to the left, similar fresco with Madonna and Four Saints, the work of talented student of Tomaso da Modena named Teacher of Feltre (1350 ca.). At the entrance side has kept the Tomb of Francesca, daughter of the poet Francesco Petrarca, who died in childbirth in 1384 and whose grave slab by her husband Francesco Brossa (which was in Treviso court officer) did have a Latin inscription touching.