Top of the World
The Sanctuary of Greccio, along with three others, is one of the four sanctuaries erected in the Sacred Valley: its structure is embedded in the rock of the mountains overlooking the medieval village of the same name, in the province of Rieti. From its 700 meters high it offers a breathtaking panoramic view of the Rieti basin. Known throughout the world as the Franciscan Bethlehem, the Sanctuary is a mighty architectural complex that seems to rise from the bare rock. The original nucleus of the Sanctuary is the Chapel of the Crib, built in 1228, the year of the canonization of the Saint, on a cave where, on Christmas night of 1223, St. Francis with the help of Messer Giovanni Velita lord of Greccio, after papal authorization, represented for the first time in the history of Christianity the birth of Jesus, establishing the first Crib. It consists of a small cave dug into the rock, with a barrel vault with a lowered round arch. Under the modern altar table, there is the living rock where the Saint laid the Simulacrum of Jesus, while on the back wall, a valuable fresco of the grotesque school represents, in two scenes, the Nativity of Greccio and the Nativity of Bethlehem with the image of the Virgin in the act of suckling the Child Jesus. At the end of the lunette is Mary Magdalene, protector of hermits. The Greccio Nativity scene is based on the iconography of the scene of the same name painted by Giotto in the Upper Basilica in Assisi: Francis, wearing the white dalmatic of the deacons, kneeling, adoring the Child, above, on the right, the priest celebrates mass. Behind Francis all the other protagonists of that event are depicted: in the foreground, the man dressed in a long red tunic is, according to local tradition, Giovanni Velita, the Grecian nobleman descendant of the Berardi Counts of Celano who became a great friend of Francis, on his left, his wife Alticama Castelli of Stroncone and the people of Greccio. Numerous are the artistic treasures kept within the ancient walls of the Sanctuary.
