The Basilica of Saint Peter in Chains, also known as the Eudoxian Basilica, was erected in 442 on the site of a pre-existing Roman domus by order of Licinia Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III.

The church's origins are linked to a fascinating tradition: in 432, Eudoxia's mother, Elias Eudocia, received as a gift from the Patriarch of Jerusalem the chains used in the imprisonment of Saint Peter under Herod Agrippa. Once sent to Rome to her daughter, she presented them as a gift to Pope Leo I. According to legend, when the pontiff placed these chains next to those already in the possession of the Church (dating back to his imprisonment in the Mamertine Prison), the two chains miraculously fused into a single body. The basilica was therefore built specifically to house these precious relics, called vincula in Latin, which are now venerated under the high altar.

Although the structure is ancient, the basilica's current appearance is due to the early sixteenth-century renovations promoted by Pope Julius II, who renovated the entire complex.

The church's worldwide fame, however, is inextricably linked to Michelangelo's Moses, the pinnacle of Renaissance sculpture. Sculpted around 1513 for the imposing funerary monument of Julius II, the statue, over two meters tall, portrays the prophet in a majestic pose while clutching the Tablets of the Law under his arm. A famous detail is the long beard which, as Vasari observed, is sculpted with such mastery that it seems more like a man's beard. "work of the brush rather than the chisel."

Curiously, Moses' head features horns: this iconographic choice stems from a misinterpretation of the biblical text (the Vulgate), in which the Hebrew term indicating the "rays of light" emanating from the prophet's face was incorrectly translated as "horns."