St Peter's Italian Church – London's Little Italy Basilica

St Peter's Italian Church in London was completed in 1863 as the largest Catholic church in Great Britain and the spiritual centre of Little Italy. Conceived by Saint Vincent Pallotti in 1845, the building was modelled on Rome's Basilica of San Crisogono. Its 33-metre bell tower houses a bell cast in 1862, while a 1960 memorial plaque commemorates 446 Italians lost on the SS Arandora Star in 1940.

London · from the walk “Clerkenwell Uncovered: From the World's First Tube to London's Radical Heart” · audio ~3 min · Generated

St Peter's Italian Church, 136 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1R 5DL

Who conceived St Peter's Italian Church in London in 1845?

Look at this elegant façade before you... those colourful mosaics, the statues of saints gazing down from their alcoves. This is Saint Peter's Italian Church, the spiritual heart of London's forgotten Little Italy.......... Did you know that these very streets... Clerkenwell Road, Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden... were once home to over twelve thousand Italians? In eighteen ninety-five, the Italian consul estimated the area to have around twelve thousand Italians. They called the neighbourhood simply "the Hill," after Back Hill, the lane just behind this church.......... The first wave arrived in the early eighteen hundreds... skilled craftsmen from the northern Italian regions of Piedmont and Lombardy. They were makers of mirrors, picture frames, and precision instruments like barometers and thermometers. Later, families from southern Italy swelled the community, and with them came ice cream, barrel organs, and all types of pasta.......... Now, this church was the brainchild of a remarkable man... Saint Vincent Pallotti, a Roman priest who in eighteen forty-five dreamed of building a church for London's Italian emigrants. The Irish architect John Miller Bryson worked from plans drawn by Francesco Gualandi of Bologna, modelled on the Basilica of San Crisogono in Rome. The original design was meant to hold three thousand four hundred people, but funds ran short and it was greatly reduced. Even so... on the reduced scale finally built in eighteen sixty-two to sixty-three, it was Still the largest Catholic church in Great Britain.......... And here is a detail most visitors walk right past. Above the façade sits a thirty-three metre high bell tower, built in eighteen ninety-one, housing a bell known as "The Steel Monster." That great bell was cast in eighteen sixty-two by Naylor Vickers of Sheffield and was exhibited at the International Exhibition that same year.......... But look into the loggia... the entrance porch. There you will find one of the most moving memorials in all of London. A plaque installed in nineteen sixty commemorates four hundred and forty-six Italians who lost their lives on the SS Arandora Star in nineteen forty. When Mussolini entered the war, Italians living in Britain were rounded up as enemy aliens and faced deportation to Canada. Many were simply waiters, shopkeepers, and restaurant owners who had lived in London for years. The ship was sunk by a German torpedo. The artist Eduardo Paolozzi lost his father, grandfather, and uncle in that tragedy.......... And one more story to carry with you. Saint Peter's has always been famous for the excellence of its music, and visiting soloists have included Enrico Caruso, "The Great Caruso," who sang on the steps outside this very church.......... It is believed that the annual procession held here each July was the First outdoor Roman Catholic religious event held in England since the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It has been running since the eighteen eighties... a tradition that has survived everything... two World Wars, a pandemic, and the slow dispersal of the Italian community across London. Every July, they come back. They always come back... to the Hill.

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