A small parish church or oratory at the site dates to the 1069, originally dedicated to San Giovanni Evangelista.

On January 20, 1498, Pandolfo IV Malatesta, then lord of Rimini, sought refuge from a conspiracy to assassinate him called the congiura degli Adimari.

On the left of the outer wall of the facade, a marble monument holds the remains of Gian Battista Paci, cavaliere di Santo Stefano, who died in 1615.

To the right of the entrance is the neoclassical funereal monument to Alberto Mattioli, designed by Luigi Poletti and with a bas-relief sculpted by Pietro Tenerani.

The 1916 Rimini earthquakes caused eighteenth-century plaster on the church's apse to collapse,[4] revealing forgotten fourteenth-century frescoes, which have been attributed to the Maestro dell'Arengo.