Chiesa San Pietro, Albano Laziale

The parish church of St. Peter the Apostle is a Catholic place of worship in Albano Laziale, a town in the suburbicarian see of Albano in the province of Rome.

The foundation of the church is very ancient, as indeed the very choice of the titular saint would testify: St. Peter in fact is said to have been, according to local tradition, the evangelizer of Albano Laziale, in the first century.

The earliest record of the church's existence goes back to the Vita Leoni papae by Anastasius Librarius, according to whom Pope Leo III had the roof of the church of St. Peter's in Albano, which was falling in place, restored.

The church bell tower is Romanesque in style and dates from the 12th century. At the back is the iuspatronatus chapel of the Savelli family, feudal lords of the place, who imposed their protection on the church from the 15th century until 1697.

This ancient church, commissioned by Pope Ormisda, was carved out of a large hall belonging to the Roman baths built by the Roman emperor Caracalla.

The most important of the many restorations took place in the late Middle Ages, while in the 14th century a series of alterations were made, traces of which still remain today, such as the double-sloping ogival arch with marble corbels and columns, placed above a door on the western side of the church.

The Savelli family, in 1440, took possession of the church. In the chapel, now destroyed, they buried some of their family members there.

The princely tombs are now visible in the interior of the church; marble entablatures from the Severan period are also preserved here, transformed into altars or balustrades.

Some of the walls still retain frescoes, such as the one placed in a niche of the Virgin of the Sign from the Byzantine period and the larger one depicting St. Margaret and St. Onofrio, which can be dated roughly between the 13th and 14th centuries.

The large 16th-century altarpiece depicts the handing over of the keys to St. Peter. Eighteenth-century banners are also present.

On the eastern exterior side of the church, two marble friezes from the Roman imperial period are reused as portal jambs.