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The Don Bosco Hall originally served as a sacristy, which led into the sanctuary. The custodians of the sanctuary, the monks, came into the church to celebrate the sacred rites and to recite the “divine office”. This bright room housed the holy vestments, as well as precious gold and silver objects and reliquaries. These and the sanctuary’s paintings were plundered in 1810 by Napoleon, who abolished all religious orders, drove the Augustinian monks out, and closed the sanctuary and monastery. The door that led into the sanctuary was walled up when the monastery, then a branch of the Hospital of Padua, was sold to the Jewish Trieste-Sacerdoti family, who turned it into a luxurious spa hotel in the early 1900s. The coat of arms of St. Augustine can still be seen in the Don Bosco Hall, as well as on the well curb, above the service stairs and on the stone arch at the entrance to the refectory (now a chapel).
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