The historic Palazzo Salviati was built in the mid-seventeenth century by Gherardo Silvani for the aristocrat Giovanni Andrea Del Rosso. Over time it has had many uses: in 1861 Robert Walter Stewart (1812-1887), Pastor of the Free Church of Scotland of Leghorn,  purchased  the building for the Waldensian Church.
This was part of a precise plan Stewart pursued during his long stay in Italy to supply the Waldensian Church with the necessary means to increase the dissemination of Protestant evangelization in Italy at the time. The building was intended to house the Waldensian Faculty of Theology, established in Torre Pellice in 1855, the headquarters of the Claudiana Publishing House and, from 1863, it was also a place of worship.
Throughout  his life Stewart supported the cause of the various Italian-speaking Protestant communities that had grown since the 19th century as well as the Waldensian Church and the purchase of Palazzo Salviati.