The sanctuary takes its name from the dove carved on the entrance portal.
Originally, this was a medieval cave church, dedicated to the Madonna di Cava, so called from the farmhouse in which it was located. After a miraculous event, which occurred in July 1579, the cave church was completely replaced with a building built at the behest of Monsignor Sigismondo Saraceno.
The only wall of the original cave church is the one on which there is a valuable fresco from the late medieval period which portrays the Madonna and Child, on the only surviving altar.
On the architrave of the large entrance portal there is an elegant rose window surmounted by the statue of the Archangel Michael.
Six niches punctuate the right wall of the single nave, within which there are statues dating back to the second half of the 1500s, depicting Santa Barbara, the Madonna and Child, Santa Lucia, San Leonardo, San Donato and San Gregorio Magno. On the left wall, however, there are six other niches, in four of which there are frescoes of the Assumption, of an Eternal Father, of Saint Michael the Archangel and of the Immaculate Conception, unfortunately deprived of her face.
On the pillars of the triumphal arch there are other frescoes, which portray the Crucifixion and San Biagio.
On the counter-façade, in the upper register of the walls and above the access door, the Twelve Apostles are represented in as many medallions, dating back to around the mid-1600s.
To the right of the presbytery, dug into the rock, there is a sort of side nave, but it is actually a room dating back to a period subsequent to the foundation of the sanctuary, and therefore not part of the original medieval rock structure of the church. This area served to host pilgrims. In this area there are several chapels: on the left wall there are the chapels of the Madonna del Rosario, of the Massacre of the Innocents (1665) and of the Crucifix, frescoed between Saints Nicholas and Vito (1735); on the right, there are the chapels of the Madonna and Child, with a sixteenth-century stone statue in local polychrome stone, and of Sant’Orsola, seventeenth-century, with an image of a scene from the life of the Saint, portrayed with Saint Peter, Saint Paul and another young Saint.
