The name and origine of the church are linked to St. Benedict: it is said to have been built, around the year 1100, on the house of the Anicii, in the place where San Benedetto da Norcia, who was related to that family, lived when he came to study in Rome at the end of the fifth century: it still shows a cubicle where the future monk would have lived, before going hermit, praying to the image of the Madonna that is the most relevant to the church.
This is a small church surrounded by buildings on three sides so that only the façade and campanile are visible. The plan is that of a basilica, with a nave and aisles. The façade is in front of a vestibule made up from the former narthex, and has the entrance to the convent on the right. To the left is what looks like a domestic building, but it contains the Chapel of Our Lady on the ground floor; there used to be a separate street entrance (now blocked) into it.
The simple and restrained frontage is 19th century, and is very similar to that of San Pantaleo. The recent restoration has cleaned it up and repaired the stonework, which is now in white with recessed pointing. The entrance doorway has a raised cornice supported by volutes, and above this an architrave runs across the breadth of the façade. On this is a large lunette window. The composition is crowned by a triangular pediment, and there is an acanthus leaf finial on top.
The nave has four assorted columns in the arcades on each side. They are of different stones, and have assorted ancient limestone capitals of assorted orders which date from the 1st to the 5th centuries. The builders of the church had to play mix-and-match between columns and capitals in order to get the tops level, and some of the capitals had their bottoms chopped off.
The columns are, in the left hand arcade: pink granite, with Corinthian capital having rosettes. Grey granite, with an inverted column base having egg-and-dart moulding on it in lieu of a capital. Pink granite, with an Ionic capital. White marble with ribs, with a cut-down Composite capital having four volutes and its carving unfinished. The right hand arcade columns all have Corinthian capitals, and are of pink granite except the third which is of cipollino marble.
The open truss roof now lacks a ceiling. There used to be one, with a fresco depicting The Apotheosis of St Benedict, but this apparently collapsed at some stage in the 19th century.
The walls have mostly been stripped, revealing the brickwork, except for areas bearing fresco remnants.
The church is rightly proud of its Cosmatesque floor. There are many larger and grander ones in Rome, but this is the only one which has been conserved rather than restored. As a result, it looks shabby since the marble pieces have worn and cracked with time, and many of the inlay pieces are missing and have been replaced with cement. On the other hand, everything that you see is original and not replacement work of later centuries as most of the other such floors in the city are. Much of the detail is intricate.
The nave walls show fragments of 12th century frescoes which have been conserved in the last restoration; the right hand side shows scenes from the Old Testament, and the left hand side from the Last Judgment.
The side walls of the shallow presbyterium have a pair of old frescoes. To the left is one depicting St Helena, of about 1500 but restored by Francesco Giangiacomo in the early 19th century. To the right is a very interesting 15th century fragment showing St Anne holding Our Lady, who is in turn holding the Christ Child.
The conch of the apse contains a damaged fresco of the 16th century, in the Venetian style. It depicts Our Lady, Queen of Heaven with allegorical representations of the Trinity. The figures are flanked by a pair of angels, one with a lute and the other with a triangle (for percussion).
In the apse itself, the contemporary frescoes of two saints on either side are of St Nicholas of Myra on the left, and St Blaise on the right. These were restored by Giangiacomo again.
In the middle of the apse is displayed a mediaeval icon of St Benedict as a young man, which was restored by Luigi Galli in 1844. It was stolen during the latter part of the residence of the Carmelite sisters. The Heralds replaced it with a modern picture, but were able to recover the original after the police tracked it down. The book that he holds reads: Ausculta, o fili, precepta magistri, inclina aurem cordis tui ("Listen, son, to the precepts of the Master, and incline the ear of your heart"). It is the first line in his famous monastic rule.
The devotion to St. Rita, which began in the twentieth century in this sacred place, has solidified after the occurrence of a miraculous event by the intercession of the Saint, in a place near Trastevere.
Note: The church will be closed for restoration from July 23 to September 17, 2019. In this period the only function will be the Holy Mass from Tuesday to Sunday at 6.30 pm. The church will be open from 18:00.
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