[2] For this reason, as well as for its central position within the city, a few years after the Saint's death, the convent became the main Roman seat of the nascent Franciscan order of Friars Minor.

Nonetheless, the institution always maintained the connotation of a center of culture and teaching, since it was the seat of a seminary for novices and a hospice for scholars.

This rich library, re-founded in 1733 and called Bibliotheca Aracoelitana (or Evoriana, from Évora, Portugal, the city of origin of its founder, the Franciscan José Ribeiro da Fonseca[4]) was open to the public.

In 1798, during the first French invasion, the convent was deconsecrated and used as a stable; with the advent of the Napoleonic government (1810–1815), it became the seat of the Accademia di San Luca for a short time.

[5] In 1873—soon after the unification of Italy, when many religious orders were suppressed and several ecclesiastical buildings and assets confiscated—the Italian State expropriated the complex and used it as the headquarters of the traffic police.