"[6] From all this, it is inferred that the first occupants of the convent had been some minor conventual friars who had abandoned the Franciscan monastery located in the Catocastro district at the foot of Amantea's castle near the church of St. Francis of Assisi, now in ruins.

After the plague of 1656, the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Conception undertook new work in the oratory of the Nobles, and the minor observants began to sell space for individual burials or family pits under the floor of the church, for the obvious purpose of "making cash" for the maintenance of the convent.

[14] Other figures who were buried in the church included the governor of Amantea Giacinto Santucci († 1664), castellans Antonio Spiriti († 1769), Pasquale Gabriele († 1787), Giuseppe Poerio († 1801), soldier Casimiro Belluomo († 1785), physician Ignazio de Fazio and his heirs and successors (upon payment of an annual fee of 10 carlins as established in 1672), priest Giovanni Battista Posa (upon payment of 8 ducats as established in 1676), the noble Amantean bishop of Termoli Antonio Mirabelli († 1688).

[21] The current appearance of the church is largely due to the interventions directed by Gilberto Martelli in 1953, which provided for the restoration of the ancient and essential Gothic architecture at the expense of the Baroque marble altars placed in the side chapels, and on the outside the rearrangement of the entrance porch.

[21] These interventions were consolidated and renewed by the last restorations undergone by the church in the early 1990s, with the repaving of the entire complex in square terracotta tiles and the construction of the electrical and lighting systems.

[22] While the church, dependent on the parish of the collegiate church of San Biagio, was always officiated, despite the poor condition of the bell tower[24] and the copious water infiltration in the south wall,[25] the convent was used for different purposes: first the seat of some municipal offices, the municipal archives and a secondary school, then a mental health center and later the headquarters of the local health authority,[26] only after the aforementioned work in the early 1990s was it restored and used for its original purpose.

The entrance porch of the church is framed between the bell tower and the northwest corner of the convent, the one that houses the oratory of the Nobles: it is raised two metres (6.6 ft) above the ground, and is accessed via a staircase that tends to narrow upward.

[29] The essential lines of the church's gabled façade rise behind the entrance porch: in the center a small monofora opens in a pointed arch, surmounted by the recesses in which, until 1984, ten ceramic basins were individually arranged in the shape of a Latin cross.

The old bronze bell is preserved today in the cloister of the convent: a readable inscription on it reports that it was first cast in 1404, thus before the arrival of the Friars Minor Observant and the construction of the church as we know it, then it was recast in 1500 and then in 1861.

[36] On the back wall of the nave near the triumphal arch of access to the presbytery are the bust, inscription and family crest of the noble Amantean bishop of Termoli Antonio Mirabelli.

[26] In the first bay is placed a Carrara marble "Madonna and Child" by Antonello Gagini, dated 1505 and commissioned by Nicola d'Archomano, a citizen of Amantea:[7] this work, due to the richness and plasticity of the drapery and the particular effect of some unfinished parts achieves "a remarkable expressive outcome," according to scholar Enzo Fera.

[7] Gagini also sculpted other statues of the same subject in Mesoraca, Morano Calabro and Nicotera, before leaving for Rome where he worked with Michelangelo Buonarroti on the tomb of Pope Julius II at the San Pietro in Vincoli basilica.

[7] Before the 1953 interventions, the left nave was enriched by numerous marble side altars, of which the one in the second bay and that of St. Lucy of Syracuse, made of local Lapis Lacedaemonius, stood out in the 1930s.

[37] The chancel, oriented eastward as in the early Christian and mendicant tradition,[39] is set six steps higher than the modern floor of the church, and is opened by a large sandstone ogival triumphal arch:[38] it is of quadrangular plan covered by a cross vault with ogives resting on crochet or hook capitals typical of Gothic architecture,[38] and is not particularly bright, perhaps in part due to the blinding of one of the three monoforas that illuminated it, due to the 19th-century construction of the auditorium.

The altar of the oratory is the work of the Messina sculptor Pietro Barbalonga, to whom is owed the creation of the pilasters of Ionic order and the small marble statue of the Madonna and Child placed above the lintel: the latter, however, would also be attributable to an anonymous Calabrian artist of the 14th century.

[42] In the center of the altar is placed the "Nativity of Our Lord," a marble altarpiece attributed by Alessandro Tedesco to Pietro Bernini and by Alfonso Frangipane and Enzo Fera to Rinaldo Bonanno:[43] it is a 16th-century work.

[44] Near the altar a small fragment of the ancient floor of the oratory and of the entire San Bernardino complex, made of black and white sea pebbles, is still preserved.