In 1805, the Italian peninsula was governed by Eugu00e8ne de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, as viceroy, who took up residence in the nearby Quirinal Palace.

He turned the convent of San Carlino into the Imperial Army barracks and the church into his stables. It was a tragic historical episode of the undermining of art and the desecration of the sacred.

On 20 September 1870, the storm troops of Garibaldi's army of reunification stormed into Rome, breaching the Aurelian wall near the Porta Pia.

The 'bersaglieri' conquered Rome passing in front of San Carlino. Pope Pius IX took refuge behind the Leonine wall surrounding the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner inside it. The situation lasted until the signing of the Lateran Pacts on 11 February 1929, which made possible the creation of the sovereign state of Vatican City.

During the Second World War (1914-1918), Pope Pius XII urged the religious orders and clergy of Rome to shelter and hide Jews in their convents and other religious buildings in order to protect them from the Nazi genocide; he himself sheltered them in the Vatican and in the palace of Castelgandofo.

Following the Pope's dictates, San Carlino sheltered a Jewish family inside. The danger of the situation was aggravated by the fact that the building directly opposite the convent was the residence of high-ranking German army officers.

Thus, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, like many other convents and residences of the clergy in Rome, could well have its tree in the Garden of the Righteous of the Nations in Jerusalem.

At present, the relationship between the Trinitarian community of San Carlino and the Italian State is mainly of a cultural nature, and in order to conserve and enhance its artistic heritage.

This relationship is particularly concrete with the Superintendence for Artistic and Cultural Heritage, an institution which for several decades has been committed to San Carlino and which has found in the Trinitarian community collaborators who have tried to live up to their responsibility as owners of such illustrious artistic treasures.