Il verde che cura. Conservazione e riuso delle aree verdi negli ex-ospedali psichiatrici

The greenery as a means of care is an ancient concept. In this sense, designed landscapes played an important role within the psychiatric therapy, constantly accompanying the mental hospital buildings since the first asylums. As simple formal and English layouts always associated with vegetable and agricultural gardens, these places preserved their features at least up to the mid-twentieth century, being then often compromised by building works and lack of maintenance, especially when the psychiatric institution was decommissioned. Once briefly revealed some of the “values” there involved, the paper dealt with the criteria commonly addressing their reuse, comparing them to what the two so-called Charters of Florence stated. What thus emerges is the recurring difficulty to entirely recognise these parks as “historic”, due to the ageless idea, not actually eradicated by the two Charters, that only the “monumental” gardens deserve an undifferentiated safeguard.