SANATORIO DI BORNO [IT]

Exploration #252 Sanatorio di Borno. These buildings were constructed in the early 20th century, initially as a summer colony. With the outbreak of the First World War, like many other buildings in the valley, it was transformed into a recovery hospital for wounded soldiers.

After the war, the buildings were remodelled and renovated and in 1934 the Borno Sanatorium, named after ‘Gaetano Bonoris’, was inaugurated. The sanatorium was intended for the treatment of patients suffering from tuberculosis, dividing them into wards for men, women and children. With the discovery, spread and use of penicillin to treat tuberculosis, all sanatoriums were gradually decommissioned.

The Borno sanatorium was closed in the 1960s, and little by little the forest took over the surrounding area.

LANDESANSTALT TEUPITZ [DE]

Exploration #198 Landesanstalt Teupitz. In the years between 1905 and 1908, the psychiatric hospital Landesanstalt Teupitz was built as a self-sufficient institution from 28 individual buildings with clear Art Nouveau influences.

During the First World War, it was used for the first time as a military hospital, then again as a so-called state insane asylum; at the beginning of the 1930s, 1,660 patients lived here. At the beginning of the 1940s, the clinic was subordinate to the Bernburg killing centre, where, according to the National Socialist eugenic-racial ideas, mentally and physically handicapped persons, mentally ill persons and persons classified as antisocial were exterminated within the framework of the euthanasia action “T4”, of whom more than 1,500 came from Teupitz.

Some buildings were reopened after the war as a psychiatric institution, but the majority were converted into a Soviet military hospital, which explains the Cyrillic lettering throughout. Since the withdrawal of the Russian forces after reunification and the rebuilding of the psychiatric hospital in 1997, the houses have been empty, the grounds are hardly affected by vandalism due to their remoteness, most of the damage is due to natural decay, and the former park has now turned into a dense forest area where roe deer and wild boar roam. From autumn 2021 the Landesanstalt Teupitz is totally fenced off with a 2.5m high fence and monitored by cameras.

TERME CORALLO [IT]

Exploration #175. The Acque della Salute spa, also known as the Terme del Corallo, was built on the ancient Pigna farm where, in 1854, a salt-water spring had been discovered that was considered suitable for treating digestive diseases. In 1856, a number of citizens took steps to have the spring enclosed within a small octagonal temple to facilitate its commercial exploitation. It was so successful that in the early 20th century the spring was taken over by the Acque della Salute company, which decided to build a real spa around it in an elegant Art Nouveau style. The spa was quickly completed and inaugurated in July 1904; in the same year a tram line was opened from the spa to the city centre.

The Acque della Salute soon became one of the main attractions of Livorno, which at the time was still one of the Italian capitals of seaside tourism. A luxurious hotel, the Hotel Corallo, was also built, equipped with electric lifts even at that time.
During World War II, the Americans took over the spa complex and made it their Officier’s Club. They discovered the properties of the waters and began the first agreements with Coca-Cola.

At the end of the war, the urgent need was to rebuild those activities that would give income, and so the production of Coral products (water and soft drinks) was restarted, together with the production of the new drink Coca-Cola, while the thermal activity was never restored, transforming the pavilions of the former establishment into a dance club.

In 1968 a disastrous fire severely damaged the monumental part of the complex. In the same inauspicious year, Coca-Cola swallowed up all the production of the Corallo company and put an end to production. The factory buildings and its grounds continued to lie in a serious condition until 2019, since when an association has been trying to bring them to new life.

MANICOMIO DI VOLTERRA [IT]

Exploration #173. The former psychiatric hospital of Volterra was an institution for mental patients founded in 1888. Since 1996, following the Basaglia law, the hospital has been in a state of abandonment.
The Psychiatric Hospital of Volterra originated with the establishment in October 1888 of a dementia section within the Ricovero di mendicità located in the former convent of S. Girolamo. This section became more and more important and was gradually transformed into a modern asylum for the treatment of mental illness; from 1933 it was called the Psychiatric Hospital of Volterra.

The first director was Luigi Scabia from Padua. Under his direction, the asylum became a city within the city, a village-asylum with isolated pavilions, open, self-sufficient, autonomous, equipped with all services (slaughterhouse, bakery, mill, oil mill, shoemaking, carpentry, workshops, furnace, ice factory, sawmill, laundry, tailoring), based on work therapy, on the very limited use of means of restraint and on the exercise of recreational and artistic activities, such as music and dance.

In 1934, following Scabia’s death, Giovanni De Nigris took over as medical director. He experimented with new therapies in use throughout Italy, including malariotherapy, insulin therapy, electroshock, lobotomy and opotherapy, a form of hormone therapy that was used on psychopathic and criminal patients to contain their excitations. Under De Nigris’ direction, the asylum reached its peak with 4,547 inpatients housed in over forty pavilions. In 1955, Gino Simonini took over as medical director. Under his direction, the neurological department became one of the most advanced in the hospital complex; ergotherapy and shock therapy continued to be practised, but the new pharmaceutical therapies based on psychopharmaceuticals were also introduced.

In 1963, the establishment adhered to Law 36 of 1904. The law stipulated that the hierarchies within the facility followed a hierarchical style where everyone had a superior. The nurses were called guards or superiors and a police-like regime reigned. According to testimonies of the time, it was like being inside a prison. The patients of the asylum had no decision-making power. The patients were people with different pathologies from depression, autism, schizophrenia and many others. However, even people who were idealistically different could suffer internment as a form of estrangement from society.
The patients’ rooms had barred windows and every evening the patients were locked inside and the privacy of the guests was often violated. For example, letters written to family members by the inmates were never delivered but were kept in the patient’s file.

Following the closure of the asylum, a book ‘Correspondence Denied’ was published. The book contains all the undelivered letters from patients to their families.
The last medical director was Carmelo Pellicanò (1975-1980), a convinced supporter of closing the asylum complex and transforming it into a therapeutic community. Despite the enactment of Law 180/1978, the final closure of the Volterra Psychiatric Hospital took place on 31 December 1996, as established by Law 724/1994, which required the Regions to close the ‘remaining psychiatric hospitals’ by that date.

HEILSTATTE GRABOWSEE [DE]

Exploration #154 Heilstatte Grabowsee. Heilstatte Grabowsee was the first sanatorium for pulmonary tuberculosis in northern Germany and was founded by the German Red Cross in 1896. It is located about 30 km north of Berlin, in the urban area of Oranienburg. The approximately 34 hectare area is surrounded on two sides by forest and banks in the south and west into the Grabowsee lake.

In the second half of the 19th century, the number of lung patients in the German Empire rose sharply. About a third of all patients between the ages of 15 and 60 suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis. The Heilstatte Grabowsee was part of the People’s Hospitals Association for the Red Cross initially planned as a test facility. It was to be investigated whether lung patients could also be treated successfully in the northern German lowlands. Until then, human medicine assumed that lung diseases could only be improved or cured in the mild climate of the Mediterranean Sea or in pure mountain air. This is how the first lung sanatorium in northern Germany was established in 1896. In 1900 there were already 200 beds available for slightly to seriously ill men.

During the four years of the First World War, Grabowsee was used by the Red Cross as an emergency hospital for the treatment of soldiers with lung disease. Prisoners of war were also housed here until 1918. The war and the inflationary period also brought the sanatorium into great economic hardship. The people’s sanatorium association sold the institution on June 1, 1920 to the Brandenburg State Insurance Institute. From 1926 onwards, extensions were built so that the number of existing beds doubled to around 420 by the 1930s.

After the Second World War, thanks to the discovery of antibiotics, tuberculosis could be cured more quickly: long hospital stays were no longer necessary and the facilities were no longer used for medical purposes. The sanatorium was used by the Red Army as a Soviet military hospital between 1945 and 1995. Some facilities were run down in the long term, so that after the withdrawal of the armed forces of Russia in 1995, a new use did not seem possible without enormous expense.

Today, the grounds are a popular backdrop for films and photographs. In 2013 the site was used as a location for the film Monuments Men – Unusual Heroes and in 2017 for the film Heilstätten, which takes place in the Beelitz Heilstätten. An association is nowadays taking care of the place.

You could also check my report of these abandoned sanatorium: sanatorio città di Milano, Landesanstalt Teupitz, le sanatorium d’Angicourt.

SANATORIO CITTÀ DI MILANO [IT]

Exploration #109. At the beginning of the last century Italy, together with the other European nations, was fighting against the great health emergency of that time, “il mal sottile”, that is tuberculosis. The first structures in Italy were built in Valtellina; some of them are still present in the territory, some in a state of abandonment, others partially recovered in hospitals. With the increase of cases, mainly due to the fact that the poorest family members lived together in small houses, the government of that time decided to build new sanatoriums all over the peninsula. The task was entrusted to a young clinical tisiologist, Eugenio Morelli, who in a few years succeeded in training new specialised doctors and creating a network of sanatorium structures; structures distributed throughout the peninsula, designed in a similar way to contain costs.

The structure we are talking about in this article was inaugurated in 1924 with the aim of hospitalising the sick TBC patients of the Municipality of Milan. Built in elegant Art Nouveau style, it stood just a few kilometres from Milan, far from large population agglomerations, busy roads and establishments that could alter the purity of the air. The place chosen was also on the edge of a large wood and a pinewood that protected it from the winds. The climate was constantly less hot than in the city, better ventilated in summer and less foggy in autumn. Enlarged during the following years, in 1930 it could count on about 1000 beds. Like all sanatoriums there was also a church, which in this case was particularly important and was connected by corridors to the sanatorium so that the patients did not have to go outside.
Starting in the 1950s, following the contraction of the sanatorium sector due to the advent of the antibiotic era, beds were gradually converted to hospital requirements until the 1970s when the structure became a fully-fledged hospital. The hospital continued in its function for many more years until in the early 2000s when it was decided to build a new hospital, because it was more in line with modern hospital concepts. The decision to build a new structure instead of modernizing the old one sparked a lot of debate but in the end the new hospital was inaugurated in 2015, right next to the old one which was left from one day to the next in disuse, abandoned and unattended, at the total mercy of thieves and vandals.

The photos you can see in this gallery were taken in various visits not long after the closure of the hospital. Unfortunately, at present the structure has been depraved of everything that could be stolen, including the heavy cast iron radiators and the marbles of the stairs and the church; the pews of the church were set on fire, copper was stolen from the roof and finally bored kids meticulously broke every single window glass. A real pity for a historic structure that could have been recovered and used for new purposes.

ELISABETH SANATORIUM [DE]

Exploration #107. This sanatorium was constructed as a Lung Clinic between 1912 and 1914 by the Jewish Doctor Walter Freimuth and his wife. In 1952 the East German government repurposed it to treat patients with Skin and Thyroid tuberculosis. In 1967 it was again transformed into Skin Clinic. The main building was renovated in the 1980s, while the side buildings were designated as a housing unit for the staff and a “Wirtschaftshaus” – a stable of sorts to keep livestock.

The Clinic was closed down in 1994 and the property was returned to the Freimuth family who had survived the war in Exile in the United States. The building is currently in a very bad state. It was worth a visit due a very nice art work by Plotbot KEN, which unfortunately was vanishing too.

DR ANNA’S HOUSE [DE]

Exploration #88 Dr Anna’s house. Dr Anna’s house was the medical surgery and home of a German doctor specialized in urology. Even if everyone calls this place Dr Anna’s there is no evidence to any Anna anywhere in the house, but only to Dr K who lived at the property with his wife and his collogue Dr C who worked at the surgery. Dr K was born in 1910 and died at the age of 78 in October 1988. The property was still used after his dead, probably by his wife.

The building is now in an advance state of decay and the upper floors are beginning to collapse. The lower floor were the surgery, including an operation theatre, examination room, a store room and a large library of books in German and english, evidence of the education of the doctor. There used to be jars with preserved human organs, but over the years the organs have been gradually stolen (even if the jars remain..). The upper floor were the living area, including a room with a well preserved Steinway Grand Piano. The other rooms were unfortunately not accessible at the time of our visit. Many photos were around the house, evidence of travel and their opulent life.

If you liked this exploration you could have a look to this former soviet hospital: the blue theater hospital.

IL VILLAGGIO DI SONDALO [IT]

Exploration #64. In the first half of the 20th century, Italy, and many other countries, waged a real war against the worst disease of the time, tuberculosis, also called the ‘mal sottile’. Until the discovery of an effective drug in the second half of the 1950s, the only effective treatment was heliotherapy, practised in facilities called sanatoriums. Admission to sanatoria was also a form of isolation of the sick from the rest of the community, to prevent the risk of contagion. Sanatorium therapy was a palliative treatment to control symptoms and stimulate immune defences, through the triad “air – rest – food”. The locations for the construction of sanatoria had to be characterised by pure air, so many of these facilities were built along the Alps.

The sanatorium we are talking about in this article was the largest sanatorium in Europe. Built at the request of the fascist government, the choice fell on Sondalo because of its excellent weather conditions. In fact, not far from Sondalo had already been built a few years earlier, the Prasomaso Sanatoriums, now totally abandoned and in ruins. To built Sondalo, the work took eight years, from 1932 to 1940. The work was very demanding, both the access roads and the foundation plans were literally carved out of the rock, and artificial stone hairpin bends were built. The final result, however, was very neat, characterised by a rationalist style of architecture typical of the splendour of the regime of the time. It was a true independent village, equipped with an innovative system of cable cars that distributed clean linen, medicines and foodstuffs from the central building to the various pavilions. In 8 years, 9 pavilions were built to accommodate up to 300 patients each.

Although the village was only opened at the end of the Second World War, during the conflict the sixth and seventh pavilions were the protagonists of a little-known affair. In fact, thanks to a highly secret mission, very important works of art from Milanese museums and private collections were transported to the valley in lorries on duty at the Alpine dams and then hidden in various hollow spaces, including paintings by Rubens, Tintoretto and Segantini, in order to save them from possible bombing and looting. An even thicker mystery, never explained, remains as to how everything was done with the presence of a German garrison garrisoning in the village… unconfirmed rumours claim that the commander of the garrison was actually, in normal life before the war, a professor of Italian art history who had lived a lot in Italy studying mainly Tuscan art…
The Village has lost its importance since the 1970s and only a few pavilions are still in use as a hospital, which in recent times has become vitally important as it has become the valley’s reference Covid centre. The disused pavilions, on the other hand, are in a state of ‘controlled abandonment’. An association of volunteers, whom I thank for the opportunity to visit the site, is in fact responsible for preserving the abandoned pavilions from further acts of vandalism and has over the years collected many objects and testimonies of the sanatorium village in a small museum.

PREVENTORIO CHIAPPONI [IT]

Exploration #13 Preventorio Chiapponi. The Preventorio Chiapponi was a medical facility like others located in Italian localities where the favorable climate was believed to have a positive effect on the health of those hospitalized. The preventoria were by definition intended for preventive purposes, for diseases that in their already diagnosed forms required treatment in sanatoria, particularly tuberculosis. Children with lung problems from the province of Piacenza were hospitalized here.

Preventorio Chiapponi was built at beginning of 1900 at the behest of a benefactor, patron and agricultural entrepreneur, Rocco Chiapponi, born in 1854. The place built on the top of a small hill in the middle of a green area, was perfect for children with lung disease who needed long therapies and an healthy air. In the 1944, during the second world war, it was confiscated by the partisans and changed in a hospital to assist the wounded thanks to the civil resistance of so many young doctors.

The structures grew rapidly and more than 65 beds were collocated in the rooms but before the end of the year it was cleared and occupied by the nazi-fascist troops. After the war it had got back as an hospital for respiratory diseases until the 60s, then it was closed. Now the place is totally abandoned and in very rotten condition.