Asili e ospedali psichiatrici tra conservazione e riuso: alcune osservazioni

Many studies have been dealing with the heritage of Italy’s asylums and psychiatric hospitals once they had been closed, starting a slow recognition of the memorial values tangible and intangible they embody. Their safeguarding then slowly began, while most former asylums have been increasingly showing states of abandonment and disuse. Impeded by the damnatio memoriae traditionally addressed to this kind of “memory places”, where the social stigma kept the ‘aliens’ isolated, such as an evidence of the power of the sociocultural elites, the crucial role these structures can play today, such as both economic resource and cultural evidence, cannot be denied anymore. Since most of them are still suffering states of degradation and disuse, considering the effects of the current pandemic, the preservation and re-use of these artifacts, both as “places of memory” and “common good”, is becoming even more urgent. Basing on the literature review of some recent adaptive-reuse projects and works in Italy and abroad, several insights on the methodological criteria and operational practices appropriate to approach in coordination the conservation and reuse of these places are then here dealt with, verifying the compatibility of the possible new uses.