In his redesign of the Sacro Monte, around 1565-70, the architect Galeazzo Alessi imagined a square on the Sacro Monte di Varallo. A space bordered by palaces, the ‘piazza’ would have evoked the place of political power in Jerusalem. Alessi wanted to create a large open-air scenography, in which to set the last stages of Jesus' life. The drawings are the architect's projects for the palaces of Caiaphas and Pilate.
At first, his project was not undertaken, but the idea was proposed again around the end of the sixteenth century by Carlo Bascapè, the bishop of Novara. He asked to create a square bordered by four buildings to represent the palace of Pontius Pilate, the courts of Jewish high priests Caifas and Anna, and the palace of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.
The square of the tribunals does not look like a sanctuary, but like the square of a Renaissance town, immersed in the green of the Valsesian landscape.