The patron saint of Perinaldo is Saint Nicholas, celebrated on 6 December, in the parish church of San Nicola da Bari, in the town's historic centre: built over an earlier 11th-century structure, it was enlarged between 1465 and 1480 and renovated in 1660 in the new Baroque taste by the architect Francesco Marvaldi. Among the works it houses is a painting attributed to Bartolomeo Gennari, donated to the church in 1672 by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who was born in Perinaldo itself.
The town's connection to the famous astronomer is also recalled by the municipal astronomical observatory named after him, founded in 1989, and by the museum of the same name, from 1997, housed in the town hall building: in 2012 the mayor of Perinaldo was also presented with the certificate for the naming of asteroid 7556 Perinaldo. According to local tradition, it was Napoleon Bonaparte, during a stay with a noble family of the town in 1796, who introduced the inhabitants to the vegetable then grown only in Provence, today known as the Perinaldo artichoke.
