The rich cloth merchant, the Greek Nicolò Stratti, an important figure in the city of Trieste in the early nineteenth century, in 1839, ordered the architect Antonio Buttazzoni to design a neoclassical style building to the north-east of the square and to remember the style of Palazzo Carciotti which for forty years dominated the banks.

The façade is crowned by a balustrade and completed by a sculptural group, which once stood on the postic façade, the work of the Venetian sculptor Luigi Zandomeneghi.

In the allegorical work, Trieste is represented by a woman surrounded by symbols that praise the cultural and economic growth of the city, such as technological development (George Stephenson’s locomotive given to Austria in 1837 to improve the Trieste-Vienna railway), urban planning (a capital), artistic (the zither, for music, the palette for painting and the bust for sculpture), work (an anvil, a hammer and an anchor) and, finally, the growth of reason but also the presence always of the mystery of darkness (an owl, an animal sacred to Minerva).

In 1846, due to financial difficulties of the Stratti, the building was purchased for 400,000 florins by Assicurazioni Generali. On the ground floor of the building there is the historic Caffè degli Specchi inaugurated in 1839 but completed only in 1846 when the ownership of the building passed to Assicurazioni Generali. The facade of the building was completely renovated in 1872 on a project by the architects Geiringer and Righetti.