The shrine of St. Vittorino is set on a hill overlooking the Roman city of Amiterno to the East. The martyr’s deposition in a Roman burial context brought about the development of a vast cemetery with a sizeable retro sanctos, over which a basilica was made with a longitudinal lay-out, one nave, a protruding transept and confessional.

Around the room that housed the venerated tomb, the tombs ad martyrem found their place. Vittorino, who was martyred ad aquas cotilias on the Via Salaria, was laid to rest, as St. Jerome’s Martyrology recalls, 83 miles from Rome again on an area of the Via Salaria. The first placement of the venerated tomb may have already taken place in the fourth century.

The pictorial ornamentation, with fake marble decoration, was from the same period. In the fifth century, the bishop Quodvul(t)dues had some changes made in order to put his own tomb there decorated with marble reliefs. An area to the west of St. Vittorino’s cubiculum connects the spaces more closely linked to the venerated tomb with the wide western gallery and the cubicula connected to it. The work which Bishop Dodone of Rieti had done at the end of the twelfth century produced a real articulated crypt that connected the venerated area with the other burial spaces.