Brother Simon from Collazzone died in 1250 in the small convent of St. Elijah in Spoleto, surrounded by public veneration. The city requested and obtained a canonization process from pope Innocent IV, and in 1254 the Minor Friars started the construction of a new, big convent and church, in honour of their fellow brother, yet named after St. Simon Apostle as the canonization was never completed. The new buildings were ready by 1280 and faced many restoration works thereafter; though they passed through the first Napoleonic secularization unscathed, they faced actual devastation during the process which led to the unification of Italy, as they were turned into barracks in 1863. The inside of the church was heavily altered, while the convent lost the cloister’s 17th-century frescoes. In 1893 the whole complex became a students boarding house for orphans of civil servants.
Today it is possible to admire the church’s imposing façade, a typical mix of local Gothic and Romanesque, while the inside is in a very poor state, following the heavy, 19th-century alterations.

L’Umbria, Manuali per il Territorio, Spoleto, Roma 1978