[2] Consecrated to Mary, mother of Jesus, the church enshrines that icon in the north transept, alongside a baroque statue of St John of the Cross.

In 1849, during the last stages of the revolutionary Roman Republic's resistance to the invading French forces, Santa Maria della Scala was used as a hospital where Garibaldi's soldiers, who were wounded fighting in the Trastevere, were treated.

In 1650, nearly fifty years after the buildings completion, Carlo Rainaldi designed for the church a tempietto-shaped baldachino with 16 slender jasper Corinthian columns and a high altar.

Around 1600, the friars built a monastery next door famous for containing the Papal court's 17th century pharmacy (Antica Spezieria di Santa Maria della Scala) on the second floor.

The former pharmacy now houses a museum, containing the herbarium, and the original scales for weighing medicines, the machines for making pills, oil mills, mortars, and alembic stills.