Complesso Vignola Mattei (ex Santa Maria in Tempulo)

Roma Capitale records that a small oratory to St Agatha was built here by a Greek religious community, probably by the end of the sixth century, and that at the start of the ninth the church is linked to a monasterium Tempuli holding a venerated Marian icon. The church under its present dedication, with the attached Benedictine nunnery, is mentioned unambiguously for the first time in 1155, and the campanile, whose remains are now embedded in the external wall, dates from then. In 1222 Dominic moved the Tempoline nuns to San Sisto Vecchio, taking the icon, which is now at Santa Maria del Rosario a Monte Mario. The complex became a private house until, in the seventeenth century, it was absorbed into the Mattei estate of Villa Celimontana and presumably turned into a nymphaeum; Nolli's eighteenth-century plans describe it as a hay barn. It was saved from demolition when the Parco di Porta Capena passeggiata archeologica was created at the start of the twentieth century, and was then given rent-free until the 1980s to sculptors, among them Michele La Spina, Francesco Sansone and Ugo Quaglieri.