Interwar boys' school The building was erected in 1926 to house a boys' school named in Italian "Opera
Cardinal Ferrari" in honour of a recently deceased Archbishop of Milan who had shown much engagement for social justice. not the
Società San Paolo of
Alba, as sometimes written). The school operated for two years: in 1928-29 it had 270 enrolled pupils, only one hundred of which were Catholic; and 1929–30, with just 130 pupils.
Hebrew University (1949-1990s) In 1949 the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), whose previous campus on
Mount Scopus, now in East Jerusalem, also had to be abandoned, took over part of the premises. Several departments of the university moved in, and by the late 1980s several of them were still housed there, including the university publishing house, Magnes Press, the offices of the Friends of the Hebrew University, the Research and Development Authority, and the headquarter of the
World Union of Jewish Students, sharing the building with the
British Council Library and the
Dante Alighieri Society for Italian Culture.
Franciscan cultural and communications centre The Custody of the Holy Land pursued the return of the building, and by the end of the 1990s they received it back as their property, which it remains to this day. ==Current use==