From 1802 onward, the city’s most important high school was moved to the former monastery of Santa Cecilia, in the shadow of Porta Torre, the main gateway to the historic center of Como, and since 1865 it has been named after Alessandro Volta. In the entrance hall one can admire a marble statue of the scientist, created by the sculptor Gaetano Monti from Ravenna and donated to the school in 1832 by a teacher who had been a pupil of the inventor of the electric battery. Volta maintained a close connection with this institution, although not in its current location. He attended the grammar school first at the former Jesuit college in what is now Via Tatti and later at the seminary of Santa Caterina in Via Borgovico; then, after the suppression of the Society of Jesus and the establishment of the Royal Gymnasium, Volta was appointed headmaster in 1774 and professor of experimental physics in 1775, positions he had to leave in 1778 when he was appointed professor at the University of Pavia. Inside the building there is a Museum of Physics and Natural Sciences, whose original core was formed thanks to a donation made in 1808 by Giulio Cesare Gattoni (1741–1809), a personal friend of Volta. Busts of other illustrious citizens of Como can be seen on the façade of the school; from left to right: Caecilius (1st century BC), Caninius Rufus (1st–2nd century AD), Pliny the Elder (23/24–79), Pliny the Younger (61/62–c.114), Paolo Giovio (1483–1552), and Carlo Castone della Torre di Rezzonico (1742–1796). The eight cipollino marble columns of Roman origin supporting the Volta High School are said—according to a long-established but unproven tradition—to be those of the “most splendid portico” mentioned by Pliny the Younger in a letter to his father-in-law Calpurnius Fabatus, who had donated it to the city.
