Although a design competition was held as far back as 1968, the architects were only commissioned nine years later to do a design for the facade of the post office, a facelift on an existing »technically sound volume«. In the face of innumerable obstacles, predominantly related to the integration of a modern building into a historically, geographically and naturally established urban setting, the scheme as it presents itself today could be realized; not as a piece of stage equipment (scenografia urbana), but as a building in its own right, both selfconfident of its inherent value and sensitive to the environment.