Nenni Park

The park was built in the early 1970s to plans drawn up by the municipal Technical Office. The site on which it is located was once that of the convent of San Domenico, but after the Napoleonic suppression of religious orders it was turned into barracks. In the nineteenth century it was restructured extensively and enlarged, transforming it into one of Piedmont's biggest cavalry headquarters. Between 1943 and 1945 the building, occupied by the Black Brigades (a Fascist paramilitary group of the Italian Social Republic), became a place of imprisonment and torture for many people of Savigliano.
It stopped being used for military purposes in 1950 and the municipal government turned the building - known by this time as the Carando Barracks, after the brigade of freedom fighters led by the Carando brothers - into council housing rented to private individuals. Many crafts activities were opened on the ground floor. The building rapidly began to deteriorate and, after numerous attempts at maintenance work, on 4 March 1968 the town council passed a resolution to demolish it. However, the demolition project was vetoed by the Superintendence for Environmental and Architectural Heritage and the church was then used for years as a municipal warehouse. There are several seventeenth-century frescoes in the chapel on the left side of the ex-church dedicated to Saint John.
Various species have been planted in the green area, which covers 1 hectare, or approximately 2.5 acres. Ruins of the old barracks still stand in the middle of the park, left to commemorate the prisoners tortured by the Black Brigades.
The south side of the park faces the avenue of Piazza Nizza, created in the early nineteenth century when part of the space opened up when the old city walls were demolished was transformed into a tree-lined public walk. Two majestic plane-trees that still stand in a small flower bed were probably part of the original landscaping. In 2004 they were classified as monumental trees and are thus protected by the Region of Piedmont.