The church was built before the year 1000, at least this say the first documents (December & Nbsp;1186). The church was built on the first walls of the ancient village of Mercogliano. The same bell tower that we see was a watch tower and defense after was built the last octagonal piece, and became bell tower. The church has had several vicissitudes between earthquakes and fires: in 1400 it was destroyed by a large fire almost completely, an earthquake in 1735 which also destroyed the ancient abbey of Loreto and the church. The present church is of the eighteenth century.
<p style=”text-align: justify;”>On one side of the church, there are two high reliefs of Castor and Pollux: in reality they are high reliefs of a Roman tomb but legend has it that they are of Castor and Pollux , and then the church stood on a temple dedicated to these two pagan gods. With the end of the Roman Empire, Christians replaced the cult of Castor and Pollux with the cult of Saint Peter and Paul, so that the passage between paganism and Christianity was not painful or the result of war, but rather a sweet and quiet passage through which we pass from veneration to some pagan deities to the worship of these Christian saints so that Christianity was grafted without creating problems on paganism. And this church, but so many churches in Christianity were born just like that, replacing ancient cults with more recent and obviously Christian cults. On the facade, completely stripped of any ornament, stand the figures of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, majolica, of the ’60s. The wooden door of 1667 was replaced by the current one in 1967.</p>
