Through an iron gate you enter the very small Primitive Church, dedicated to Santa Maria delle Carceri, heart of the Sanctuary, probably a cave adapted as a chapel: at the altar, there is a beautiful fresco, the Madonna with Child and St. Francis, of the sixteenth century, above a thirteenth-century Crucifixion.

Descending to the right through a staircase and tiny doors you enter the Cave of St. Francis, currently divided into two rooms: one contains the bed of stone on which the saint slept; in the other, on the right wall you can see a stone on which probably St. Francis sat to meditate and pray. On the wall that closes the cave, a faded fourteenth-century fresco depicts the traditional episode of the sermon of the birds: legend has it that the birds sat to listen to the saint on the ancient holm oak visible at the bridge thrown over the ditch. A wall covers a crevasse known as the "devil's hole", into which the devil is said to have fallen, defeated by the prayers of St. Francis. Next to it there is also the "dry ditch", to whose waters the saint asked not to disturb with their gurgling the prayers of the friars.

Following the path you reach a bridge, at the end of which there is a bronze with St. Francis releasing the turtledoves, by Vincenzo Rosignoli. The "viale di San Francesco" begins, an evocative woodland walk where there are various places of devotion. Among these, the Cave of the Blessed Leo, which is accessed by a stepped path, the caves of Blessed Bernard of Quintavalle, Blessed Egidio, the Blessed Sylvester and, a little further away, the Blessed Andrea da Spello.  Following the bridge, you can climb to the chapel of Santa Maria Maddalena, where the blessed Barnaba Manassei, creator and founder of the Monti di Pietà, has been buried since 1477.