The church of S. Pietro stands upon a grass piazza surrounded by mulberry trees, with a broad outlook upon the valley. The central door, supported by two lions, has a twisted design of water-plants and birds which formerly were coloured, but now only show here and there traces of green stalks on a dark red background. A finely carved inscription above it records that in the year 1218 the cistercian Abbot Rustico built the façade, but its proud historians believe the church itself to have existed in the second century, thus claiming for it the honour of being the first church erected in Assisi. The present building cannot be older than 1253 when it was rebuilt after a great fire, and consecrated by Innocent IV. The interior is finely proportioned, and the remains of ancient frescoes discovered upon the walls show the zeal of the Assisans in making all their churches, as well as San Francesco, as beautiful as they could. [Illustration: CHURCH OF S. PIETRO] In the small chapel to the left of the high altar are four stencilled medallions of a hunter with his dogs chasing a stag, besides symmetrical patterns like those of the nave of the Lower Church of San Francesco. Over the altar is a signed picture by Matteo da Gualdo (he was at Assisi in 1458, but the date here is partly effaced), of a Madonna with a choir of angels, and upon either side St. Peter and the Assisan martyr St. Vittorino. By standing on the altar steps a fresco of the Annunciation of the fifteenth century may be seen on the wall of the sacristy, discovered beneath the usual layer of whitewash some fifty years ago. The angel's profile, the hair turned back in waves from the face over the shoulders, is clearly outlined, and shows pale against the golden light of his wings. But the real treasures of this church, according to a pious author, are the bones of St. Vittorino, an Assisan Christian who was the second Bishop of Assisi, and died a martyr's death in the third century. In 1642 these relics were deposited in a more suitable marble urn than the one that had contained them before, during a grand ceremony presided over by a Baglioni, Bishop of Perugia. Other bones and ashes of some Roman martyrs were afterwards added which were taken from the cemetery at Rome by the Abbot of San Pietro "to further enrich his church." THE CONFRATERNITIES