Insane asylums in Tuscany: environmental and landscape aspect in experimenting with the asylum space

The contribution sums up the results of research on the complex mental hospitals in Tuscany 2008 PRIN. Nearly all the Tuscan architectural facilities were built in areas marked by the exceptional quality of the surroundings and they fit in well with the landscape, an element showing the great attention that psychiatrists and technicians paid to this aspect during the design phase. The characteristics of the area suitable for an insane asylum were delineated in the first half of the nineteenth century, catering to the therapeutic principles gradually developed by psychiatrists. It had to be a suburban area that was healthy, peaceful and with water resources, but that was also large enough to permit the creation of a microcosm – at once urban and rural – reflecting the order and harmony of the outside world and permitting re-education through physical exercise and work. These were the premises for building the insane asylum of San Nicolò in Siena, which featured a farming settlement and industrial colonies. Given the unique environmental features of the large park on the hill of Collegigliato, with aristocratic villas alongside elegant gardens, the Casa di Cura in Pistoia experimented with reconstructing a residential microcosm for the noble and middle classes to which it catered. Instead, San Salvi in Florence, a brand-new structure built in a vast suburban area near the hills of Fiesole, was founded on the idea of simulating the features of “ordinary” urban life, offering the solution of a village set harmoniously in the park and equipped with a farming settlement and work houses. Lastly, the therapeutic function of labour seems to have been the decisive factor in the choice of the areas and the architectural definition of the large asylum villages of Volterra and Arezzo.