San Francesco, Gothic church building in Fondi, Italy

San Francesco is a Gothic church in Fondi featuring pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and colored windows that fill the interior with natural light. The structure displays these architectural elements throughout its spaces, creating different areas for worship and prayer.

San Francesco was built around 1363 on the orders of Onorato I Gaetani, on the site of an earlier Franciscan building; an epitaph on the architrave above the entrance portal records this. From 1466 it belonged to the Neapolitan Observant Minor Friars, who held it only for short periods. It was closed under French occupation, reopened from 1843 to 1866, and the friars returned briefly in 1881. Badly damaged in World War II, the convent was restored in 1946, and a small religious community has worked there since 1968.

The name refers to Francis of Assisi, whose life is told in the 20th-century stained-glass windows by Father Giorgio Ascione, a Neapolitan friar. A 16th-century Neapolitan-school Madonna del Rosario, possibly by a Dominican painter, came here from the church of San Sebastiano and has sun and moon symbols above it. A small religious community has served the church since 1968.

The church sits in the center of Fondi and is easy to reach on foot. The interior can be explored without difficulty, as the different sections are connected and accessible to visitors.

In 1960 Vittorio De Sica filmed the rape scene of "La Ciociara" inside this church. The crucifix now displayed came from the church of Sant'Antonio, destroyed by bombing in 1944, and once belonged to a sculptural group of the Calvary carried in procession.