Its suffix originates from the Sienese Monteroni family, whose patronage rebuilt the church and built a small hospice next to it for pilgrims from Siena.

Its origins are unknown but it may first have been housed in the ruins of a 1st-century BC pagan temple or in the area around the stagnum Agrippae, after which the surrounding region is given its suffix "della Valle".

The church first appears in the documentary record in an 1186 bull of pope Urban III, which mentions it as one of the daughter-churches of San Lorenzo in Damaso.

[2] The building has three naves separated by ancient columns, each with an Ionic capital of a different design, first erected in the church in the medieval era.

On the left hand side of the chancel is the baroque funerary monument of Cardinal Stefano Durazzo (1594–1667), who was once archbishop of Genoa; a skeletal memento mori holds a bas-relief portrait of the cardinal; the sculptor is unknown.