The old Tribunal and Piazza Colombo

The building was located on the area of the current slab of Piazza Colombo.

From 1668 it housed the Church of the Visitation and the Salesian Sisters' Monastery. The very elaborate façade faced north in line with Corso Garibaldi.
The complex had a more or less horseshoe-shaped plan with a wing thrown out to the left.

The church, in the shape of a Greek cross, with three altars, housed works by Guidobono, nicknamed the "Savonese Priest", Pedrotti and Sopranis.

With the implementation of the anticlerical laws of the time, in 1892 the Nuns were definitively expropriated of everything and the building was instead used as a Bersaglieri barracks named after Umberto I.

The area of the south gardens, between the two side wings, was used as a parade ground for the Bersaglieri during the barracks period, and when they left the barracks in 1922 the open space was used as a Flower Market, first uncovered and then from 1925 covered by a metal roof.

Later the front part of the building was adapted as a courtroom. The facade was cleaned up and simplified from the original baroque, with the removal of niches and statues, and took on a more severe appearance.

On 20 October 1944, the French destroyer "Forbin", targeted by a German battery, returned fire and at 11.45 a.m. it hit, perhaps by accident, the structure that the invading troops had secretly transformed into a depot for "Molch" pocket submarines, the famous "Lindsen" lookouts stuffed with TNT (a column of which had just arrived from Lake Garda) and huge quantities of explosives.

The deflagration pulverised the building and all buildings within a radius of hundreds of metres, causing numerous victims.

The building was never rebuilt, nor was the disaster used to give the area a new and more rational layout.

Still in 1867 the square (not yet Colombo) was very narrow and bordered to the south by the building of the "Locanda di Genova".
At the meeting of November 25, 1867, the City Council decided to purchase the inn and demolish it, thus creating the square with the adjoining garden, which was named after Christopher Columbus.

An agreement with Mr. Minoia in 1883 permitted the construction of the palace with the porticoes and later in 1883 other buildings were demolished so that the square itself could be definitively enlarged and arranged.

(sources: elaboration based on texts by Roberto Colombo and others; images from Private Archive)