Probably built on a pagan cemetery area, the church was completed around 1260 to house the Order of the Humiliati, and following its suppression in 1571 it was entrusted to the Barnabites.
Of the original medieval construction, the bell tower and the brick perimeter walls remain, as does the lively and elegant series of 18th-century religious buildings facing the square.
In the interior, the frescoes in the nave and on the walls paintings of the Lombard school are of great value. Of outstanding workmanship is the sandstone portal depicting St. Paul, by Buzzi (1731).
Complementing the complex are the cloister, the library containing an important book heritage of the convent, and the Villoresi Theater, built in the early 1930s and considered one of Monza's leading theaters.
