The medieval village of Greccio is one of Italy's most beautiful yet lesser-known villages. Perched on the hillside of the Rieti province, approximately 80km north of Rome, a row of rustic stone houses crawls along the edge of the hill, peering down onto the expanse of the valley below. For most of the year, Greccio's 1,500 inhabitants live a peaceful agricultural life surrounded by a beech and oak forest where wild boar roam.

However, in December the village swells to welcome visitors from all over the world. For Christians worldwide, Greccio is part of a pilgrimage route for St Francis of Assisi, a Catholic friar known for his love of nature, who was rumoured to be able to communicate with animals and believed in the virtue of voluntary poverty. Greccio is where St Francis staged the world's very first nativity scene in a cave in the year 1223 as a way to spread the story of Christmas.