It is located at Queen Street within the Central Area known as the Bras Basah Bugis precinct of Singapore's arts district.

The history of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul is closely linked with the beginning and growth of the Chinese Catholic community in Singapore.

With the development of the apostolate among the Chinese and the Indians under Father Pierre Paris, it became increasingly difficult to accommodate the different linguistic groups in the cathedral.

From 1910 to 1911, the church was further extended with the enlargement of the choir loft, construction of the entrance porch and the extension of the façade with the help of contributions from wealthy Chinese parishioners such as Mr Low Gek Seng, a manager of the Bangkok and Singapore-based merchant firm Kiam Hoa Heng.

In 1910, the Cantonese- and Hakka-speaking groups left Saints Peter and Paul for the new Church of the Sacred Heart in Tank Road built by Father Vincent Gazeau.

It was during this major renovation that the original neo-gothic high altar was demolished, and replaced with a modern 'communion table' style altar, similar to what one would find in a Protestant church, without a reredos, and no visually obvious crucifix or candles, with the stained glass windows becoming the visual focal point instead.

In early 2008, the church installed a second-hand 50 stops Allen 2 Manual Digital Computer Organ in the Choir Loft.

The parish of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul grew marginally in the 1970s but began to decline since the 1980s when schools within its vicinity were relocated.

Apart from addressing necessary repairs to the fabric, the renovation also reinstated several features of the original church, such as ornate encaustic tiles, similar to the ones removed in the late 1960s.

Besides repairing the aging roof structure and other technical improvements such as lighting and air conditioning, many of the unsympathetic changes introduced in the 1970s renovation were reversed: the modern sheet metal vertical window louvres were replaced with traditional wooden louvred windows, the badly-planned gallery at the west end was removed, and a high altar, similar to the one that was demolished, has been purchased and re-installed at the east end.