The Napoleonic administration required the Community of San Daniele to build new district prisons, suitable for the new “Districts” or “Mandamenti” subject to the recently established District Courts. The old prisons, also known as “the Bell Tower prisons,” which had been located for centuries in the spaces beneath the Guarneriana Library, now used as the offices of the Pro Loco, were no longer sufficient. They were too small, cramped, and unsuitable for the renewed function of territorial control that San Daniele was called upon to fulfill.
From 1810, therefore, the year in which the judicial and penal reform came into force, the Administration was forced to seek more suitable spaces, identifying them in the pre-existing building at the end of “Calle Varneria” (now Via Guarnerio d’Artegna).
The new prisons, known as “della Fratta,” were later taken over by the Habsburg administration when the political situation throughout Europe was normalized in 1815, and remained so until a few years after the 1976 earthquake.
After being decommissioned as a prison, the building housed the Alle Vecchie Carceri restaurant for over a decade.
In 2016, the building was renovated to become the new headquarters of the Prosciutto di San Daniele Consortium.