A brief history

This was once the convent area of the abbey of the same name, including the church, cloister and adjoining abbey buildings.

Built between 1219 and 1227 - following the foundation of the abbey by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri (Vercelli, ca. 1160-Rome 1227) of a powerful pro-imperial family - the church, consecrated in 1224, maintains its original structure, unchanged.

The University of Eastern Piedmont has been loaned from the Municipality of Vercelli the premises that now house:

• the Management offices
• the Aula Magna or Crypt of Sant’Andrea
• classrooms, some teachers' offices and seminar rooms.

The inauguration of the university was held in the spring of 2000, at the end of the restoration project which began in October 1998.

(For further information: "Past future. The places of the University of Eastern Piedmont Amedeo Avogadro", edited by G. Bona and G. Cantino Wataghin, Gallo Arti Grafiche, Vercelli, 2002; "Carta Studii et Scolarium Commorancium in Studio Vercellarum. Around the first document of the medieval University of Vercelli”, University of Eastern Piedmont Amedeo Avogadro, Gallo Arti Grafiche, Alessandria Novara Vercelli, 2005).

Both buildings were part of the ancient Ospedale Maggiore, founded in 1224 by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri. Initially, the main functions of the hospital were as a shelter for pilgrims and the poor, distribution of alms and hospitality for cleric-students. This was the place where mainly students were hosted, and it was here that the first nucleus of the Studium was formed, the University of Vercelli, built in 1228. The Studium Vercellese was formed thanks to the migration of students and teachers from Padua: a peculiarity of the Studium was that theology (as in Paris) and law (as in Bologna) were taught, as well as medicine, dialectics and grammar.

The current buildings survived the demolitions which, between 1962 and 1965, wiped out a large part of the historic Ospedale Maggiore complex.

In Via G. Ferraris is Palazzo Tartara, designed by engineer Ettore Tartara in the years 1867-1868 and originally the hospital administration headquarters. The building now houses the computer labs on the ground floor, while the upper floors, currently under renovation, will house the teachers’ offices and classrooms.

In the internal courtyard, perpendicular to Palazzo Tartara, there is the wing known as the “Ospedaletto” dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century and used as a pediatric ward, now completely renovated. Here there are some classrooms for Department courses

(For further information: "Past future. The places of the University of Eastern Piedmont Amedeo Avogadro", edited by G. Bona and G. Cantino Wataghin, Gallo Arti Grafiche, Vercelli, 2002; "Carta Studii et Scolarium Commorancium in Studio Vercellarum. Around the first document of the medieval University of Vercelli”, University of Eastern Piedmont Amedeo Avogadro, Gallo Arti Grafiche, Alessandria Novara Vercelli, 2005).

This is a large structure, spread over three floors, and once housed the religious seminary of San Giuseppe.
Nowadays it is home to the University of Eastern Piedmont, to its teaching campus (humanities and sciences).
The courses of the Vercelli campus are held in these premises. The building hosts the Department of Sustainable Development and Ecological Transition.

The San Giuseppe complex was built in 1865 to house the Collegio degli Artigianelli, run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools of John Baptist de La Salle, who had been present in Vercelli since 1841 when they were called there by Archbishop Alessandro d'Angennes. The building, constructed in the Neo-Romanesque style in keeping with the eclectic revival fashion dominant at the time, was designed by surveyor Giuseppe Locarni (Prarolo 1826 – Vercelli 1902), who was responsible for several buildings in Vercelli, including the Neo-Renaissance chapel of Sant'Eusebio in the cathedral, the Moorish-style synagogue, the neo-Gothic façade of the former church of San Marco, now used as a market and home to ARCA, and the neo-Romanesque presbytery of the church of San Bernardo or Madonna degli Infermi. These works earned Locarni an honorary degree in architecture in 1893 and, in 1899, election as mayor of the city.

The original three-storey brick building consists of a central body flanked by two wings projecting forward to form a courtyard enclosed on three sides. Only one wing was built to its full length, with the main entrance located on the first floor of the short front facing the square, while the other remained barely visible. On the facades facing the courtyard, on the first floor corresponding to street level and on the ground floor below, while the two upper floors, both divided by diminishing columns, feature a third loggia with windows half the width and a sequence of lower mullioned windows at the top. More sober arched windows without frames, also paired like mullioned windows on the top floor, characterise the external façades. The pitched roof creates two gabled façades on the wings, decorated at the top with a rose window and blind Lombard arches. Around the third decade of the 20th century, a new wing was added behind the original building, offset from the entrance wing, to which it was connected by a low diagonal structure.

Renamed Collegio Convitto San Giuseppe, or more briefly Istituto San Giuseppe, the religious institution survived until 1993 as a primary and lower secondary school with a canteen service, and at the same time as a boarding school for students attending the city's upper secondary schools. In 1994, after having to close the boarding school due to declining enrolment and relocate the school, the Lasallians resigned themselves, with the mediation of the then Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, to selling the building to the Province of Vercelli. The Province purchased it with the intention, immediately implemented, of granting it on loan for use to the Polytechnic University of Turin so that it could establish its Second Faculty of Engineering there, starting in the 1994/95 academic year. The Polytechnic entrusted the Isola & Boasso Engineering Firm with the construction of the adjacent triangular-shaped building, completed in 2005 and intended for teaching and heavy testing laboratories, which is still owned by the Polytechnic.

Fifteen years later, in 2010, the Polytechnic terminated the loan agreement for San Giuseppe; at the same time, the University of Eastern Piedmont moved in, specifically the Materials Science – Chemistry degree course from Novara. In 2011, negotiations began between the Province, the Municipality and Uniupo, which in November 2012 – after the last courses of the Polytechnic had ended – led to a programme agreement and finally, on 5 August 2013, to the signing of a new thirty-year loan agreement between the Province, owner of the property, and the University of Eastern Piedmont. From the 2013/14 academic year, the San Giuseppe complex thus hosted the dual degree courses in Biological Sciences and Computer Science and those in Literature, Languages and Philosophy with their master's degrees, while in 2015 the sports field behind the building was granted for use to CUSPO (Centro Universitario Sportivo Piemonte Orientale).