With its grand neoclassical façade, designed by architects Barabino and Resasco in the mid-19th century, this church is an elegant backdrop to a square that is constantly teeming with university students from the humanities colleges located in nearby Via Balbi. On sunny days students like to go and sit under the tall Ionic columns of this church. Upon entering, visitors are usually startled by the majesty of the church and by the beauty of the decorations and works of art housed within. Despite heavy damage caused by bombings during the Second World War, the interior of the church is still a veritable museum of 17th-century Genoese art, including paintings and frescoes by major Ligurian artists of the late-Mannerist and early-Baroque periods, such as Cambiaso, De Ferrari, Strozzi, Piola, Guidobono, Carlone, Assereto, Castello, Benso and Maragliano. During the 18th century, once the building had been transformed from Gothic to Mannerist, Montesquieu quite rightly defined it as ‘the most beautiful church in Genoa’. The Nunziata, as the Genoese call it, is also the seat of one of the Casacce, i.e. the confraternities whose members carry large gold- and silver-clad crucifixes and sculpture-groups at religious processions.