No Boston neighborhood has changed more in recent years than the North End, where new residents, new businesses and skyrocketing real-estate prices have been the norm ever since the end of the Big Dig. By now, the narrative is familiar: the Italians are moving out; the yuppies are moving in; and yesterday’s cold-water flat is today’s luxury condo.

But in certain places, the old North End abides. And at the intersection of Hanover and Battery Streets, there’s a small space where the present fades away with particular intensity.

“I just was in here one day, doing something for the girl next door,” recalled Peter Baldassari, standing in a sun-dappled spot between two brick buildings. “I said, ‘Gee, this would make a beautiful place for the saints.’”

That’s how All Saints Way started, roughly 25 years ago. Since then, Baldassari has packed this space with a dizzying array of memorabilia honoring individuals who’ve been canonized by the Catholic Church, or are heading in that direction.

Today, All Saints Way is one of Boston’s most unusual places. Baldassari calls it a shrine, but that term feels somehow inadequate. You could also describe All Saints Way as an impromptu, one-man hall of fame of holiness — part outsider-art project, part testament to Baldassari’s personal piety.   

“Saint Rocco was a great saint, you know,” Baldassari told me at one point.

Asked why, Baldassari recounts a massive amount of detail in the span of a few seconds.

“Oh, he’s the patron saint of pestilence and sickness,” he replied. “He’s born in Montpellier, France. There’s more feasts in the streets for that saint than any other saint in the world. You’ll find him in Franklin, Mass., Portland, Maine, Malden, Mass. You’ve heard of him!”

As remarkable as Baldassari’s physical collection is, the information packed into his brain might be even more impressive. If someone is pictured on these walls, he can narrate their story instantly, in minute detail. 

Case in point: Solanus Casey.

“Father Solanis Casey, he was a Capuchin priest,” Baldassari explained. “He was a healer — he suffered from eczema, bad. They used to see him in the garden, with the garden hose, watering his legs down. Because of the itch.”

So how does such an offbeat place survive in a neighborhood that’s so highly coveted? As Baldassari tells it, the answer is simple: he’s known the families who own the adjoining buildings since he was a kid, when he delivered their newspapers.

When he first floated the idea for All Saints Way, Baldassari recalled, “They said, of course you can do it! Sure, Pete. No problem.”

Baldassari is a double throwback: a lifelong North Ender whose old neighborhood is vanishing before his eyes, and a deeply religious man whose faith is absolute.

“When they opened his coffin,” Baldassari said of Solanus Casey, “not only they found him intact, not only they found his skin still pliable — you could see his blue eyes. And he was looking at you!”

This was in 1997, 40 years after Casey’s death. When I ask Baldassari if he ever doubts these and other saints’ stories, even slightly, he answers: “No, I don’t doubt. Why should I doubt it?”

Still, Baldassari is no reactionary. He knows that as a result of serial sex-abuse scandals, the Catholic Church has had an extremely difficult stretch.

“A lot of people are angry because of what happened with the clergy,” he said. “A lot of people are very angry.”

And despite some nudging, he won’t pine for the North End of his youth. When I mention a frequent lament of long-time North Enders — that there aren’t little kids running the streets like there used to be — Baldassari bats it away.

“Well, there aren’t a lot of Italian families with kids, but there’s a lot of yuppie families with kids!" he said.

“No problems here,” he added. “This is a good neighborhood.”

It’s also a neighborhood in which Baldassari’s creation stands out. There’s nothing else in the North End quite like it.

The plan, he says, is to keep All Saints Way open to the public as long as he’s physically able.

“When you see it gone,” he said, “then you know something happened to me.”