PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL OF R.

With a veil of sadness, I tell you the long story of R.

The structure is huge and has an area of ​​approximately 163,000 square meters, of which more than 33,000 are occupied by the various pavilions, while the rest is a park.

The psychiatric hospital of R. begins its history between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century.
Born as a hospital of charity, I pass to various destinations of use over the years.
It soon became a military college, but in 1871 it became a full-fledged psychiatric hospital.

A year after its opening, the hospital housed 234 patients, who soon brought the structure to the brink of saturation.

On the eve of the Great War, the structure was further expanded, but they built only one of the eight planned pavilions.
Just in time because the maximum number of patients was reached during the two World Wars.

Between 1945 and 1949, further work was carried out on the structures, up to the structure that appears today.

Inside the mental hospital of R. we find various departments:

• two called “Chiarugi” (one for men and one for women)
• “Marro” where the men defined as “quiet” were hosted
• “Tamburini” which housed the “quiet” women
• “Morselli” where both men and women were interned, with serious pathologies that required containment cells

It was not only a place of confinement and treatment, but also a center for neurosurgery studies, and was nicknamed by the people of the town “the factory of ideas”.

Time seems suspended inside the psychiatric hospital of R.

Long corridors surround a garden, which has remained lonely and desolate.

As soon as we enter we find a trolley intended for the transport of the bodies, and we do not know how to interpret the sensation that assails us.

We also find bathtubs, probably intended for hydrotherapy.

A practice in which the patient is immersed in boiling or frozen water to calm him down, and closed inside the tub.

Upstairs are the operating rooms, still full of equipment.

In one room, we have a wall covered with wooden drawers that hold sensitive patient information.

The psychiatric hospital of R. its decline began after the Basaglia law of 1978, which sanctioned the closure of psychiatric hospitals.
He slowly emptied himself of his patients, and closed his doors between the 1980s and 1990s.

We do not know what the living conditions of the patients inside it were, nor what therapies they carried out.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a luminary inside the hospital hypothesized that many of the mental illnesses were due to genetic defects.
That is, the skull was too small to contain the brain.
For this reason, surgery was often used to increase the space.

Electroshock was also widely used, as were straitjackets to contain the sick.
A hell created by man for men, where they lost themselves and their dignity, which should not be forgotten.

If you love abandoned asylums at this link you can see my explorations.