The old headquarters of the institute is located in the same area where, in honor of St. Lucifer, a temple and convent were built as early as 1682, as confirmed by the inscription above the lintel of the main door of the present church. The management of the buildings and surrounding gardens was entrusted first to the Dominican friars, who implanted a school of Theology there, then to the order of the Trinitarians, which was suppressed in 1803, when the Hospice of the Poor of St. Lucifer was founded by the concordant will of Pope Pius VII and King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia. In 1827 it was transformed into the Carlo Felice Orphans’ Hospice with the main purpose of educating and training orphaned and disinherited youngsters in the various trades. Therefore it was equipped with modern machinery that enabled the training of blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, textile workers and then printers and rope makers with the production and sale of their handiwork. In 1884 the School of Arts and Crafts was established, open to all young people, which gave rise in 1907 to the Royal Industrial School for Mechanical, Electrical and Decorative Industries under the Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce and in 1931 to the Royal Industrial Institute. From 1946 it became home to the Industrial Technical Institute, which in 1964 was named after Dionigi Scano. In the early 1900s, an additional building, separate from the main building and arranged at the intersection of S. Eusebio and S. Lucifero streets, had been built to house the workshops, and it has retained its original configuration to this day. It consists of three warehouses with a rectangular plan placed side by side, with pitched roofs supported by trusses and wooden warping of considerable workmanship, made communicating with each other by an inner courtyard from which the basement floor is accessed.
Menu
