| The Church of St. Peter was inhabited by monks, followers of St. Basil the Great. The church is of important historical, artistic, impressive example of a seventeenth-century, was rebuilt on an earlier medieval building. "A document of 1133, which notifies the desire of the Count of Lecce, Accardo, to donate to the Bishop pro tempore of the Lecce Church of the Blessed Apostle Peter, we deduce that the Church was during the eleventh century, when it was built in the township of Venocio a small church dedicated to the Apostle Peter, because, according to legend, the saint would stay the winter in the country. traces of previous construction with simple quadrangular vault, are gathered in the old ground now used as a vestry. Attached to the church there was a place that for centuries was known as "oratory of pilgrims": a set of small rooms used to house pilgrims who came from far away out of devotion to St. Peter. the small medieval church became part of the seventeenth century church today that we admire today. a great work of Monsignor Spina Scipio. Around the building's original church of St. Peter, therefore, was built in the baroque . On the walls of the nave are some items of valuable paintings and baroque stucco of great historical and artistic representing episodes in the life of St. Peter the Apostle. a report, drawn from a pastoral visit in 1851 the Bishop of Lecce says that at the Mother Church is a treasured relic of the bones of St. Peter. |