These new congregations were responsible for several great preaching churches built in the Centro Storico, the others being Sant'Andrea della Valle (Theatines), San Carlo ai Catinari (Barnabites), and The Gesù and Sant'Ignazio (Jesuits).

[2] In 1575, Pope Gregory XIII recognised Neri's group as a religious Congregation and gave them the church and its small attached convent.

[3] St. Philip Neri, helped by Pier Donato Cardinal Cesi and Pope Gregory XIII, had the church rebuilt, starting in 1575.

The ground plan follows the Counter-Reformation design of churches established at the Gesù; a single main nave with transepts and side chapels, leading towards the High Altar.

This is clearly set within an elaborate gold frame, a quadro riportato, and is painted with a Venetian influenced view of di sotto in su (from below to above).

His designs for the vault decoration around the painting, with elaborate white and gilt stucco work incorporating figurative, geometrical and naturalistic elements, were carried out by Cosimo Fancelli and Ercole Ferrata.

The third altarpiece is an Ascension by Girolamo Muziano, the fourth, a Pentecost by Giovanni Maria Morandi; the fifth, an Assumption by Cerrini.

The fifth altarpiece on the left is an Annunciation by the Passignano; the fourth, a Visitation by Barocci with the ceiling frescoed with Saints by Saraceni.

[7] One painting that did not stay in its intended chapel is worth recording; Caravaggio's altarpiece of the Entombment of Christ was commissioned by Alessandro Vittrice, nephew of one of Saint Philip's friends, and depicted the entombment in a radically naturalistic format, foreign to the grand manner found in the remaining altarpieces.