Church of Saints Peter and Paul

The current parish church replaces the previous and smaller church of San Pietro located on the above Rocca and no longer suitable to perform its functions. Also the realization of this new parish church is due to the brothers Giuliano and Ippolito Della Rovere, abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of San Lorenzo the first and marquis of the same place, as well as lord of Castelleone, the second. Not without some confusion in time with the Dukes of Urbino, of which they are cousins, and even more for the fact that Ippolito’s daughter, Livia, married the sixth and last Duke Francesco Maria II. For the construction of the new parish church Abbot Giuliano and his brother grant a large building on the right of the door to the castle, in the past probably used as a barracks of the local garrison. Originally a single nave, the building was later expanded on various occasions. A first time on the right side by the Brotherhood of SS. Sacramento with the construction of a second nave passing the walls of the castle and then also on the left wall with the construction of three side chapels.And so it remained until the end of World War II, when, in addition to the demolition of the clock tower located above the entrance door to the castle, there was also a radical alteration of the sacred building badly damaged by the cannonade. The church has three naves, one on each side of the original nave, the semicircular apse is built beyond the walls of the castle and the new sacristy is repositioned.
The bell tower, initially placed on the castle walls “at noon” behind the altar of SS. Crucifix, around the mid-nineteenth century was moved to the central part of the building on the other side between the church and the rectory and next to which will be built the side chapels, to be finally brought back on the castle walls always to the left of the new apse and inside the new sacristy. The central nave of the church has a round vault, while the side ones are barrel. The decorations of the “basin” of the apse are the work of the famous Ostrensi decorators Marcantonio and Tarcisio Bedini, father and son, while the three bronze doors to the church were donated by the comm family. Cristoforo Marcelli and were made in 2003 by the sculptor Ubaldo Ferretti of Grottammare. Inside the church there is a 17th century Annunciation attributed to Antonio Viviani, known as il Sordo, a Sant’Antonio abbot of unknown baroque painter, a 17th century Madonna Assunta attributed to Terenzio Terenzi known as Rondolino, the San Martino in maestà work of 1564 by Ercole Ramazzani, as well as a sculpture depicting Saint Peter Martyr, patron saint of the town.