Its façade on Via Giulia and some decorations have survived, incorporated in the structure of the Liceo classico Virgilio, built on the same site between 1936 and 1939 after a design by Marcello Piacentini.

The building was located in Rome, in the Regola Rione, about halfway down via Giulia (at the n. 38),[1] in an area devastated by the demolitions started in 1938 for the construction of a road between Ponte Mazzini and Corso Vittorio Emanuele, never built because of the war.

[2] In 1656 Giuseppe Ghislieri (1570–1656), a renowned physician and member of the family to which Pope Pius V (r. 1566–1572) had belonged, on his deathbed destined all his goods to the foundation of this institution.

[4][5] The institution was administered by four guardiani of the Archconfraternity of the Sancta Sanctorum by the holy stairs,[6] and was placed under the protection of the noble Florentine family of the Salviati.

[2] When the Salviati family died out in 1794, protectors became several cardinals, including Francesco Carafa della Spina di Traetto and Joseph Fesch, uncle of Napoleon and resident not far away, at Palazzo Falconieri in Via Giulia.