In this place - formerly known as "I sassi di Maloloco" - there was a hermitage owned by the Benedictines of Subasio: these monks from Cassina are the same who had donated the Porziuncola to Francis.
The history of the Sanctuary begins in 1215 when the Poverello gets to use a falling chapel for his prayer: it was the only existing building and had a frescoed Madonna on the wall.
In the fourteenth century, the eremitic character was transformed into a cenobitic form with the convent's construction. At the end of '300, Friar Paoluccio Trinci built the first cells in the form of dormitories, and in the 1400 s. Bernardino da Siena further expanded the structure, Incorporating the primitive chapel and the cave of Saint Francis.
The access to the Sanctuary is through a small cloister with a well in the centre whose water, perhaps made to flow from the Saint of Assisi, never fails.
The Eremo is accessed through a path bordered by dry stone walls, preceded by an entrance arch. The complex develops around a central triangle-shaped cloister accessed through an arch. The cloister, along one of its sides, overlooks the overhang and the valley below, while along the two other sides develops the so-called “conventino”, a two-story stone building. On the ground floor, the conventino features a reception, a hall for liturgical offices and the new kitchen on the western side, the vaulted and frescoed refectory, the old kitchen and the choir room with wooden furnishings on the northern side. On the first floor, the northern side of the conventino hosts the six friars’ cells along a corridor surmounted by five flying arches. On the eastern side of the cloister there is the San Bernardino chapel: the first room has a barrel vault. The second is the original chapel, dedicated to St. Mary of the Carceri and partly carved in rock.
Below the sacristy, through a short steep staircase, there are two rooms; one with the bed of s. Francis carved in the rock, the other with the small oratory and an altar where he prayed.
The wood of the hermitage preserves various caves, in which some followers of Francesco lived: fra Masseo, fra Rufino, b. Bernardo da Quintavalle, b. Egidio, b. Silvestro and b. Antonio da Stroncone, who lived here for thirty years.