In the small square in front is the statue of St. Francis of Assisi while inside the church it is possible to admire the splendid frescoes by the Japanese painter Luca Hasegawa. To fully understand the history of this church it is necessary to go back to 1549, the year in which the Jesuit fathers, led by St. Francis Xavier, left Italy for Japan to convert the Japanese population to Christianity. The mission manages to bring so many proselytes that the Japanese shogun issues a decree of expulsion against the Jesuits. When the Franciscan friars also landed in Japan in 1593, the story became more complicated, provoking a second reaction from the shogun, this time even harder. On December 9, 1596, his order to arrest the Franciscans, Jesuits and Japanese neo-Christians became the martyrdom of 26 Christians. On February 5, 1597, 26 crosses were erected on a hill outside Nagasaki: 6 Spanish missionaries, 17 Japanese Franciscan tertiaries and 3 Japanese Jesuits: a sacristan, a catechist and a preacher known as Paolo Miki. From this point on, a long process of canonization began which ended only on 8 June 1862, the day on which the 26 Japanese martyrs were finally raised to the glory of the altars. In the meantime Civitavecchia, thanks to the traffic of its Port which at the time belongs to the Church, becomes an important stage for all the religious who leave and return from the missions, giving rise to the need to build a new meeting point. The martyrdom took place in Nagasaki on February 5, 1957 The martyrdom took place in Nagasaki on February 5, 1957 Thus, in 1863, Father Tommaso da Roma, as Minister Provincial of the Friars Minor asked and obtained from the Diocesan Bishop Monsignor Camillo Bisleti permission to build a church in the coastal area of the Via Aurelia known as "Four Doors". Only the problem of expenses remains and so Father Tommaso also asks the Pope Pope Pius IX the "nulla osta" to use a part of the alms collected for the canonization of the Holy Franciscan Martyrs of Japan with the promise that the future Church would be dedicated precisely to their. The works lasted more than eight years and finally on June 13, 1872, the feast day of St. Anthony of Padua, the Church is consecrated and the Franciscan Friars Minor make their official entry into the ecclesial reality of Civitavecchia. Among the first figures that Hasegawa paints, the beautiful Madonna and Child with the kimono (with oriental features and wearing 16th century clothes) and the scene of the 26 Japanese martyrs, fallen on the hill of Nagasaki on February 5, 1597 imprinted in the five apse paintings.