It's one of Liverpool's oldest churches, which has stood proudly in the heart of the city for nearly 200 years.
And, while we are very familiar with the impressive, Gothic-style chapel which stands on Scotland Road, it is what lies beneath which is less familiar. The origins of the parish date back to 1804, when a small chapel was first established on Dryden Street.
The population of Liverpool was beginning to swell, and, with an influx of Irish immigration, St Anthony's soon emerged as the principal Irish church in Liverpool. A much larger building was soon needed, and the present church opened in 1833, designed by John Broadbent, who would go on to design a new tower for Walton Parish Church, and St Augustine's, on Shaw Street, in Everton.
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St Anthony's was designed to seat 1,700 people, and Broadbent wanted every worshipper to have an unobstructed view of the altar. Anyone who has been inside this beautiful building will know there is not a single pillar in the nave, which, at nearly 158ft long and half as wide, appears to be a vast, unsupported space.
The secret to this incredible feat lies beneath the church, in the crypt - where hundreds of beautiful egg-shaped arches work together to brace the building, and roof above. As well as acting as a support for the building, the crypt is also a burial chamber, with 660 individual tombs lining its walls.
Those buried here include the Reverend Jean Baptiste Antoinet Gerardot, a refugee from the French Revolution of 1789, who originally founded the parish, and Father Peter Wilcock, the priest who commissioned St Anthony's construction. The cracked stone which covers Fr Wilcock's vault is currently being replaced.
The crypt also provides the final resting place for around 2,000 men, women and children who fled Ireland during the great famine and arrived in Liverpool, only to die during the typhus and cholera epidemics which swept through the parish in 1847.
A few richer people were entombed in the vaults, where they were charged one and a half guineas (about PS1.60) for a berth. But there wasn't enough room for all the bodies, particularly those passing daily from the workhouse on Brownlow Hill.
Read along the inscriptions and you will find one for Fr Nightingale, the first of 10 priests who became known as the Martyrs of the Famine. The priests knelt beside the rags of the dying, to rub their oil into the eyelids, the ears, the mouths, the hands, and finally the foreheads of those ones who waited.
And the lice, which spread the fever, crawled into the clothing of the priests and the doctors. In this way, the men who tended the souls and the bodies of the sick became carriers of death. Their housekeepers, too, became victims as they handled their coats.
A memorial to all those who perished sits in the crypt, the inscription reading: "A memorial to those originally interred in the grounds of St Anthony's who were later reinterred in this crypt, many of whom fled Ireland because of famine, only to die of typhus in Liverpool. "May they rest in peace." Another tomb houses the remains of John Kaye and his wife, Mary, who died tragically in 1833.
John was a businessman, who helped the parish to raise the money to build St Anthony's. Michael O'Neill, the church's archivist and organist, told the ECHO in 2019: "Lots of Victorian businessmen liked to have a mausoleum, a place where you could be buried and visited - like the pyramid next to the former St Andrew's Church, on Rodney Street.
"John Kaye was a Liverpool timber merchant, and he agreed with Fr Wilcock to buy the old church on Dryden Street. Fr Wilcock was a very civilised guy, and he took John - and his wife, Mary - to Llandudno on the steamer.
"On the steamer, they had lunch, there was a solicitor and the contract of sale was signed, and the money changed hands. When they arrived back, the tide was out, so they had to land at Eastham - and then make the crossing back to Liverpool by ferry."
What happened next is inscribed on the tomb of Mary Kaye.
It reads: "Beaneath this tablet lie the mortal remains of Mary, wife of John Kaye. By a lamentable accident, whilst in the act of landing at the Pier Head, from the Eastham Steam Packet, she was suddenly torn from the arms, and drowned in the sight of her disconsolate husband."
Mr O'Neill explained: "Mary was coming up the gangplank when the ship moved, and she fell, and the ship crushed her against the side. Ten years later, her husband was buried above her."
The crypt is a peaceful space, gentle lighting adding an otherworldly quality as you walk among the tombs. The atmospheric catacombs also once hosted a regular beer festival.
