Located in the town centre, its story begins on April 30, 1599, when, according to Bascape’s will, the first ground works were laid, signing the new parish church foundation. It was decided to be built in a Latin-cross form (cross-shaped) with one nave and with a transept that can be hardly noticed and a wide choir, surmounted by a barrel vault which, at the crossing of the presbytery’s ceiling and the nave, leaves space to an oval dome. Four chapels rise along the nave: on the right the ones dedicated to Crucifix, San Giuseppe, Sacro Cuore di Gesù and to Madonna del Rosario, while the ones on the left are dedicated to San Biagio, San Vincenzo Ferreri and San Domenico and, the first one from the entrance hosts the monument dedicated to Amico Canobio.
The restoration works where completed in 1618, when bishop Taverna consecrated the edifice. The first documents about the interior decoration, dated 1620, reveal that Giulio Cesare Procaccini received a payment for the big canvas he painted, depicting Madonna del Rosario with the Saints Domenico and Caterina, probably one of the painter’s last works (he died in 1625).
The altarpiece and two other smaller paintings depict: the Sacra Famiglia (Holy Family) and the Adoration of the Magi (Tree Kings), attributed to Giuseppe Vermiglio. A few years later, when the plague devastated the town between 1627 and 1630, it was decided to interrupt any of the chapel’s decoration works done by Giovanni Mauro della Rovere (known as il Fiamminghino). But his work revealed to be so satisfactory that around 1637 the members of the San Pietro Martire militia assigned him the presbytery and choir decoration.
The painting is divided into seven major scenes, disposed in chronological order, depicting: la Battaglia contro gli eretici a Firenze (battle against the herectics in Firenze), San Pietro talking to the Milanese in Sant’ Eustorgio square, San Pietro heals a young man reattaching his amputated foot, San Pietro helps a deaf and dumb person regain the power of speech and the sense of hearing, the scene of the Martyrdom in the apse, Virgin Mary receives San Pietro’s soul and San Pietro at the feet of the Holy Trinity, at the presbytery vault. Melchiorre Gherardini, also known as Ceranino, is the author of the frescoes Maddalena’s story in San Domenico’s chapel and the ones painted in the chapel depicting the Domenican Saints’ Glory.
The nave was decorated by Federico Bigioggero from Lombardy who, following a Baroque-fashion style, designed a fake architectonic structure (nevertheless with a balcony and a fake loggia, in order to create the sense of a major profundity). The vault centre was also decorated by another protagonist of Lombard baroque painting: Giovanni Stefano Danedi, also known as Montalto, author of the San Domenico Glory with the presence of the Trinity and the Sacra Famiglia.
These two artists were commissioned to decorate the church’s walls, though today a few traces remain and are visible on the counter-façade around the big window where, on the right, appears a wowan breast-feeding a new-born baby while two other children hold her vest, as a symbol of Charity, and on the left, a woman holding a goblet and a cross, symbolizing Faith.