San Francesco Convent, Medieval monastery and church in Fiesole, Italy

San Francesco Convent is a Franciscan friary on Via San Francesco, at the western edge of Fiesole's historic centre. Its church, rebuilt in neo-Gothic style by Giuseppe Castellucci in 1905-1906, has a gabled stone facade with a rose window and a hanging porch frescoed with Saint Francis. Inside, a single nave under an ogival barrel vault is divided into four bays with four side altars; the convent lies to the right, entered through a frescoed arch and surrounded by three cloisters.

The site above Fiesole's Etruscan acropolis held a castle destroyed by Florence in 1125. Augustinian nuns built a religious house from 1225 and left in 1352. In 1399 Franciscans arrived; with friar Giovanni da Stroncone and funding from Guido del Palagio they founded the convent, gaining full possession in 1407. Bernardino da Siena was guardian in 1418. Suppressed in 1810, it reopened in 1870.

The convent church keeps a quattrocento fresco of Saint Francis in the lunette of its hanging porch, and a 1907 terracotta Madonna and Child by Primo Aglietti on the left side portal, modelled on Giovanni Pisano. Inside, the altars hold a late-14th-century Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine by Cenni di Francesco and Piero di Cosimo's Disputation on the Immaculate Conception, known as the Fiesole Altarpiece.

The convent stands at the western edge of Fiesole's historic centre on Via San Francesco, a short walk from the Cathedral of San Romolo and the former church of Sant'Alessandro. The convent entrance faces the square and is reached through a frescoed arch; the church door is on the facade. The largest cloister has a four-sided portico under cross vaults.

The library holds a rare collection of patristic works that draws researchers from across Italy who study early Christian writings. These texts are hard to find elsewhere, making the convent an unexpected destination for theological scholarship.