The building dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century and was born in the nineteenth-century expansion zone on the initiative of a group of Ancona citizens, as an alternative city theater to the more famous "Teatro delle Muse", taking on the name "Teatro Vittorio Emanuele". During the two world wars the building was decommissioned for long periods, or used for improper purposes both civil and military, up to the 50s when the building was affected by a radical restructuring with the inclusion of a reinforced concrete structure and the creation of a large gallery on two levels. In this way the old "Vittorio Emanuele" theater gave way to the new "Metropolitan" cinema-theater, adapting to the fashion of the moment that also identified in the cinema the great revival of the country and the "economic miracle" that was crossing it. From the mid-80s, however, cinema follows the sad destiny of many other Italian cinemas that, overwhelmed by the new television offer, were forced to close their doors and inevitably enter a phase of abandonment and degradation. On August 25, 2000, the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities, with a special decree, declared the significant historical-artistic importance of the "former Metropolitan cinema-theater" building and therefore submitted it to the protection standards provided for in these cases by legislation Italian. The recovery project includes five levels above ground and two underground levels. The destinations of use are mixed (commercial, directional and residential) and are distributed heterogeneously on the various levels.