Former convent of Sant'Agostino

The current building was erected around the mid-seventeenth century over the ruins of a convent destroyed by the French army in order to obtain materials to construct fortifications for the town. The dormitory and church were rebuilt, adding the bell tower, which was not completed until the eighteenth century. Following the suppression of religious orders by the French government in 1802, the Augustinian fathers, already burdened by immense debts, had to abandon the convent permanently. The furnishings and relics were lost and the church was set up as a warehouse.
In 1823 the convent was taken over to serve as the headquarters of the Regio Ospizio di Carità, a charitable institution established in 1777 chiefly to provide orphaned children with an education and an occupation. The edifice, which in 1835 became an isolation hospital for cholera patients, was then purchased by the municipal administration, which tore down the bell tower and rented the church as a barn for the military. In the years that followed the building, enlarged in 1861 by adding the wing that now houses the city library, along the road front, was allocated for different uses. In 1928 it became a branch of the Scarnafigi and the Arimondi boarding schools, and in 1934 of the archiepiscopal boarding school named for Dario Pini. When Italy entered the war, the military administration requisitioned the rooms of the boarding school to use them as a military hospital, and it was not until 1941 that the municipal government regained the building, establishing an agreement with the Rosminians to run the civic boarding school, an agreement that remained in place until 1943.
In the 1970s the G. B. Fergusio Civic Music School was transferred to the former convent, followed in the 1980s by the city library and in 2001 by the municipal Historical Archives. In 2011, for the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy the church was renovated in order to house important book and archival collections, including the library and archives of the Santa Rosa family, and the library of the Tapparelli d'Azeglio family. Renovation of the façade revealed the nineteenth-century inscription requested by the rectors of charitable institution, dedicated to Blessed Amadeus of Savoy, "protector of the poor".
Today the ex-convent of Sant'Agostino is an important cultural and social complex that offers the town numerous diversified activities. Since 2012 the complex has also housed the Centro della Memoria, a point of reference for those who want to learn more about the city, as it is a place that collects, preserves and valorizes oral documentation, photographs, films and other works about Savigliano during the last century.