Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo Apostoli

Galatina's Chiesa Madre stands on Piazza San Pietro, where the medieval Porta Maggiore once opened into the town. Rebuilt between 1621 and 1633 and completed in 1770, the church is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, Galatina's patron saints.

Why it matters

The mother church anchors Galatina's 29 June patronal feast, which combines solemn liturgy and a procession with the city's traditions associated with tarantism. Its location gave the surrounding square its name and places the church within a sacred landscape that also includes the nearby Chapel of Saint Paul.

What to notice

The late-Baroque façade has three carved portals and a central statue of the Immaculate Conception, flanked by Saints Peter and Joseph. Niches in the upper order hold Saints Trifone and Paul. An inscription over the main portal records the civic rebuilding of 1621; a second inscription marks completion in 1770. Inside, three aisles lead past polychrome marble altars to vault frescoes painted in 1875 by Vincenzo Paliotti, depicting episodes from Saint Peter's life. In the Cappellone del Sacramento, a white-marble Immacolata attributed to Giuseppe Sammartino stands above an altar funded in the 1660s by Archbishop Gabriel Adarzo de Santander.

Context and history

A church stood on this site by about the mid-fourteenth century. Galatina then followed the Greek rite until Pope Sixtus IV ordered the Salentine clergy to adopt the Latin rite in the 1470s. The Universitas rebuilt the structurally precarious church between 1621 and 1633; it became a collegiate church in the 1660s and was completed in 1770 under syndic Angelo Vernaleone. The municipality notes that the original medieval dedication may have been to the Immaculate Conception rather than to the Apostles, a possibility echoed by the façade's Marian statue. The sacristy preserves paintings and a treasury of relics and sacred furnishings donated by Bishop Lorenzo Mongiò.