Silicon photomultipliers are silicon devices that in recent times have been proposed as candidates for the replacement of photomultiplier tubes in many experimental situations. In this article we describe the performance of SiPMs as a readout system of a shashlik calorimeter composed of 41 8×8 cm 2 , 3.27-mm-thick tiles of scintillator and 40 8×8 cm 2 , 3.27-mm-thick tiles of lead, for a total of ~24 radiation lengths; the light is collected by 64 0.8-mm wave-length-shifter (WLS) fibers grouped in bundles of four for, a total of 16 channels. The SiPMs are manufactured by FBK-irst and have a sensitive area of 1 mm 2 . The calorimeter has been tested at CERN using both a low (PS T10 beamline) and high (SPS H4 beamline) energy beam during the summer 2009 data taking.