The former San Niccolò psychiatric hospital in Siena: a polymorphic reality between architecture, archive and library

Following the closure of the asylums approved by the Basaglia Law, the care of the sick was entrusted to the extra-hospital services set up in public or private hospitals. The heritage of the asylum institutions, which conists not only of the archive, of real estate, of libraries, of museum collections of medical tools and of asylum furnishings, was entrusted to the competent ASL (Local Health Bodies). The sanitary archive of the San Niccolò psychiatric hospital was kept in the premises of the former Chiarugi department, located within the former mental hospital complex in via Roma. It consists of a total of 1916 pieces, which cover a continuous chronological period from 1819 to 2003. In 2003, however, the ASL of Siena decided to donate the Library of San Niccolò to the Faculty of Medicine of the city to avoid dispersing the huge library heritage. The archive as well as the library of the San Niccolò of Siena psychiatric hospital allow us, through the knowledge of the institution’s history, to recover the real experience of the doctors, nurses and patients whopopulated the asylum.