The church of St. Peter of Spain in Boville Ernica dates from the late sixteenth century and was built on a previous Romanesque chapel.
This chapel had been built on the grotto where Saint Peter of Spain lived for many years.
St. Peter of Spain had fought the Muslims in Spain, where he lived as a hermit in a cave.
Pope Paul V gave decorations belonging to the old building of St. Peter's in the Vatican and among them an angel by Giotto, the famous mosaic "of the spacecraft", a silver bust by Cellini, container of the relic of St. Peter of Spain, two angels of Bregno, a porphyry cross, two gilded plaster bas-reliefs from the seventeenth century, a bas-relief by Sansovino representing originally the maternity of the Virgin Mary, later transformed into the Holy Family, a Nativity and a coronation of the Virgin, seventeenth-century frescoes, and many other paintings and sculptures of the seventeenth century and eighteenth centuries.
Recently a Christian roman sarcophagus of the fourth century has been obtained.
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