After the beheading of Saint Valentine, the body was taken to Terni and buried where today stands the present-day Basilica. In this area there originally stood a pagan cemetery and in 1605 the Sacred Body was found, kept by the Carmelite Friars. Over the cemetery a first basilica was built, which over the centuries suffered destruction and rebuilding.
The seventeenth-century façade, the elegant portal and the large central window were restored in 1854. The interior has a single nave, decorated with garlanded Ionic capitals supporting a dentilled architrave. In the side walls open two chapels on each side with elegant seventeenth-century marble altars and oil paintings on canvas from the 17th century.
In the Choir, in line with theurn with the remains of Saint Valentine, there is a small 17th-century altar that contains an oval painting on canvas depicting the Martyrdom of Saint Valentine.
Beside the high altar stands “The Madonna appears to Saint Valentine”, set against the backdrop of the City of Terni near two elegant colored-marble torch stands, placed on either side of the presbytery. The finds from the “Valentine area” have been placed in an adjoining room and make up the small Museum of Saint Valentine.
In the Museum there are pagan and Christian inscriptions and slabs, remains of architectural decorations, a Roman-era sarcophagus and small fragments found during the many restorations of the Basilica over the centuries.
