Da cittadelle della salute mentale a campus universitari. Dismissioni e trasformazioni degli ex ospedali psichiatrici nel nord-est italiano

The implementation of Law 180 of 1978, known as the Basaglia Law, has resulted in large abandonment phenomena and partial transformation of the vast building and landscape heritage of the former Italian asylums. In many cases the varied universe of the “mental health citadels” has been largely under-used or almost entirely abandoned, giving rise to a prolonged phenomenon, still partially underway, of disintegration of buildings and disregard of value of these large scale-areas. In the Lombard and north-eastern areas of Italy, these complexe are still largely abandoned or underused today, although there are signifi¬cant recovery projects or examples of virtuous redevelopment. Among these, the interventions that have transformed former psychiatric hospitals into “citadels of university culture” or aspire to become modern university campuses, intended as preferential subjects of development, also generating phenomena of debasement of the outstanding memory