The Cathedral of St. Emidio, the cathedral of the city of Ascoli Piceno dedicated to its patron saint Emidio d’Ascoli, lies with the palace dell’Arengo Arringo Square, the center of city life in the communal period. In May 1857 Pope Pius IX raised her to the dignity of minor basilica. The current building is the result of many adjustments and had overlapping between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. Some remains found during the restoration of the crypt in 1967 show that the first temple was built even in the fourth or fifth century on a pre-existing structure from Roman times that Sebastian Andreantonelli identifies as a pagan temple possibly dedicated to the Muses, while other historians attribute it Hercules or Juno.
The archaeological finds of the years 1882 – 1883 show that the cathedral was built using the remains of the civil basilica of the Roman forum in the identified oldest sections of the existing building as the transept, the foundations of semicircular apses and the dome dating back, in fact, at the end eighth century or early ninth century. The building of Roman civil measured about 32 meters long and 13 wide by developing a height of 9 meters. His body factory consisted of three semicircular apses and three entrances oriented towards the Forum.