The large school building provides a monumental backdrop to Garibaldi Square, conditioning its formation. After the foundation stone was laid (December 1912), construction also took quite a long time because of the opening of XXIV Maggio Street, which connected Garibaldi Square with St. Dominic Square. The design is due to engineers Bartolomeo Ravenna and Lorenzo Leone. The casamento, named after Cagliari native Alberto Riva Villasanta, who fell at the age of 18 shortly before the end of World War I, was not completed until 1930 with the completion of the central body and the other wing bordering Bosa Street. The structure suffered very serious damage during the 1943 bombing that caused it to be rebuilt after the war. The building occupies the entire western side of the square and is situated on an embankment that makes it stand out from the dense vegetation below. The wide central front is enclosed by two slightly projecting bodies in turn flanked by two side wings that continue symmetrically along XXIV Maggio and Bosa streets. The facade, in exposed terracotta, rests on a basement of Serrenti stone with two symmetrical entrances lined with limestone slabs. The long series of windows features round arches in the first two floors and lowered arches in the last, alternating single, mullioned and three-light windows. An indented projecting cornice doubled in the two foreparts concludes the building. The schoolhouse falls within the sphere of architecture typical of the 19th century but also widespread in the 20th century, with historicist elements related to neo-medieval and neo-fourteenth-century languages, but simplified and included in a modernist reinterpretation in the decorative parts. On the facade can be seen the inscription with bronze bas-relief commemorating the headquarters of the Ente Regionale Lotta Anti-anofelica in Sardinia (1946-50) against the scourge of malaria.
