Attached to the convent by the same name, the church was erected in the mid-13th century in the place of the earlier chapel of Santa Susanna, which has given its name to the entire district. Over the centuries various parts of the building have collapsed and been rebuilt, due to the subsidence of this slope of the hill, and it has lost both its Medieval and its Baroque bell-towers. The façade too was rebuilt in 1929, based on the design of the ‘gonfalone’, or standard, of San Bernardo (1464) by Benedetto Bonfigli, according to the Cosmatesque pattern of white and pink stone lozenges and inlays. The church contained the tombs of some of the most eminent families of Perugia and numerous works of art, such as a Deposition from the Cross by Baglioni, the Coronation of the Virgin by Raphael and a Resurrection by Perugino (now in Rome, in the Galleria Borghese and the Pinacoteca Vaticana). Following the collapse of the ceiling and the apse, the building remained roofless for many years and was deprived of its interior furnishings. There are plans to transform it into an auditorium.
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