The theater, opened in 1812, was obtained from the fourteenth century church of San Francesco, located on the upper floor of the complex: during the Napoleonic domination, the church was closed and conversion into theater was entrusted to architect Giuseppe Magistretti.

Three years after the inauguration, a papal decree was the cause of the closure because of incompatibility between the existing religious structure and the new destination as a place of entertainment. It reopened in 1831 on condition that the City would readapt the front, by deleting any reference to the existing church: the nineteenth-century portico, which forms the entrance to the theater is almost resting on the rest of the building that has retained most of the lines and medieval proportions.