Caterina Sforza di Santafiora, niece of Pope Julius III, built the church in 1598 for the French Feuillant Cistercians, and Cardinal Arnaud d'Ossat consecrated it in 1602. The article names no architect. It stands on the remains of a circular tower at the southwestern corner of the Baths of Diocletian, which matched a second tower about 738 feet (225 m) to the southeast.
The rotunda is 72 feet (22 m) across, with a coffered octagonal dome and an oculus that is the only source of light, in a design that resembles the Pantheon. Camillo Mariani's late Mannerist stucco statues stand in wall niches.
The Feuillants held it until the French Revolution, and the Cistercians administer it today. The government took the abbey in 1872 and demolished it in 1901 for Via Torino.
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