Antonelli will also work in the project of the old hospital’s enlargement, built in 1628 within the walls, after the destruction of the original structure (once located in Sant’Agabio borough) by the Spanish . Since the early twenties the architect Stefano Ignazio Melchioni intervenes on the structure, inserting the Pio Luogo in the urban decoration of the new town that is adopting a new form.
After a first, great project (1850), an authentic plan of the hospital, the commission requests get into new perspective. Antonelli works on the “wide ward” conceived by Melchioni, designing a new L-shaped corpse, which is connected to the remaining edifice through two lateral aisles. The structure is built according to the most modern “salubrious” standards, which assure appropriate ventilation and illumination of the spaces; it can be compared to the San Luigi Gonzaga Hospital in Torino, as well as to the ones built in England and France. It is narrated that for this constructive site, as for the Dome, it was Antonelli himself who chose the materials.
The building is still in use although the different changes it suffered and represents the official image of novara’s instituition; it is still possible to recognize in the interior part of the complex, beside the church added around 1930. The original aspect of the church can be imagined, thanks to the pictures taken by Carlo Anadone, one of novaras’s protagonists in photography.