Eighteenth-century convents are little studied, and women's third order houses even less so, despite the growing numbers of the latter. Through a case-study, this article explores the origins and functions of one eighteenth-century third order house in an Italian urban community. Relying on the rich meeting minutes of Santa Maria Egiziaca in Bologna, the article analyses the everyday realities and the changing perceptions of women's religious institutions among the urban elites connected to the house. Santa Maria Egiziaca emerges as neither only a convent nor a shelter, the two institutional types recognized in current scholarship, but rather as both. The diverse goals of the house's administrators and benefactors suggest why third order houses thrived in the eighteenth century when more traditional convents came under increasing criticism and declined.