Giovanni Colonna in 1216 raised a charitable establishment, “the hospital buildings,” to the west of the Lateran. At the tail end of the 13th century, the Colonna established the confraternity to “man the church and hospital complex of St. Peter and Marcellinus as part of their bid to take over the Lateran.” Starting in 1330, this confraternity, the Raccomandati, received various ruined houses as a donation, which they later made hospital and becomes today’s St. John Hospital in Lateran. In 1332, municipal administration regained Colosseum, and the confraternity received the license allowing them to run a public hospital in the following year.

The complex of the Raccomandati is split into two parts. The buildings in the northern complex were mainly gained from the Annibaldi family, which comprised of a cemetery that is now a formal garden, the women ward and the Annibaldi’s tower house that is now attached to it, and a funerary chapel - a small church with the apse turned toward the street. The buildings in the southern complex were comprised of the new and the old Ward that was perpendicularly positioned, blocking an ancient kilns inside that was reused by the confraternity, and the church of S. Andrea and the Holy Angel - the confraternity’s main infirmary, with its portico along the street and a clear emblem over the arch. The infirmary belongs to the Roman hospital type for an “aisleless, single-story hall articulated by diaphragm arches in the interior and buttresses in the exterior.”

Some of the more significant expansions of this confraternity were during the Black Death and the Jubilee. That is not surprising, for the Black Death tested the reliability of the confraternity’s complex and the pilgrims coming for the Jubilee who entered from Porta Maggiore would soon see the complex and the emblem of this confraternity, right behind St. John in Lateran. The emblem depicts a kneeling figurine bearing candles adore the Christ effigy of the Salvatore Achiropita. When one was sick and poor during the Middle Ages, that is precisely the symbol one would be looking for.

The Raccomandati was closely related with the Senate, for running the hospital was itself a civic leadership role, a promise of competent administration; self-governing entrepreneurial elites viewed themselves of constructed social and corporate identity. The charitable services enlarged their self-esteem by shaping an image of capable governance. And in 1386, the municipal authority assigned civil and penal jurisdiction over Via Maior (now Via San Giovanni) and officially entrusted the confraternity with the protection and development of this area, which the Raccomandati reshaped around 1395, of the road junctions, and made it an enclosed and easily controllable urban sluice gate.