The tradition wants the church prior to the birth of the same city in which, supposedly, also gave the name (originally the temple was called Santa Maria della Pergola). Legend has it that it was founded by San Romualdo in the first decade of the century XI and depended on the Abbey of Sitria that was not far from the Monte Catria and from Isola Fossara.
In the course of the restoration for the damage caused by the earthquake of 1997 revealed some fragments of paintings behind the high altar. Evacuated the wall from the altar, showed a fresco of large dimensions. The left part of the painting would be of the school of Giotto, dating back to the end of the Fourteenth Century; the section right, rear of some decades of Venetian school, while maintaining all the stylistic elements of the fourteenth-century culture.