To the villagers who asked Nivola what the graffiti on the facade represented, he used to say that it depicted the battle of Lepanto (the 1571 battle in which a Christian fleet stopped the advance of Turkish Muslims in Europe). Recently, this explanation has been confirmed by the discovery of a sketch - never realized - in which the cross is superimposed on a group of figures on one side and the Turkish crescent is superimposed on those on the other. It is hard to say why Nivola decided to devote his decoration of the facade to this historic event, and to the contrast between East and West to which it refers. Nevertheless, in the period in which Nivola worked on the project, there was occasion to rethink the relationship between the two cultures. The years of decolonization and of the Cold War were years in which there was a spread of activism in support of strengthening the international role of the Arab and Asian countries, generating fears about the possible resurgence of the old conflict between East and the West. In fact, in 1957, the year before Nivola executed the graffito, UNESCO responded to these concerns with the launch of an ambitious project of cross-cultural dialogue was to last a decade. Maybe Nivola had thought to turn the memory of the Battle of Lepanto, a crucial episode of the struggle between the two worlds, into a proposal for reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. In the end, however, all that remains on the facade are the two symbolic figures, incised in the white stucco, sparsely marked by hints of chairoscuro  These symbols transform the architecture--in itself very simple and lacking in architectural relief--into a drawing, a great page on which the mythic story told by the artist is offered perpetually for his country men's contemplation.