Il complesso dell’ex ospedale sanatoriale a Roma: la costruzione

In Italy, in the 1920s, the contagious and difficult to treat disease of tuberculosis was still a terrible reality with often deadly outcomes. For this reason, in the mid-1920s, Eugenio Morelli, professor at the “Sapienza” University and specialized in pulmonary diseases, proposed the construction of numerous health facilities for the treatment and isolation of patients afflicted with tuberculosis. In Rome, the area of Monteverde, with its many open green spaces and its particularly healthy air, had already been marked by the Nathan Council for the construction of different health structures and, therefore, it was decided to construct a hospital complex (second only to the Umberto I Polyclinic) made up of three institutes - the Littorio Hospital (today San Camilllo), the B. Mussolini Health Institute (today C. Forlanini) and the C. Battisti Sanatorium (today Villa Maraini). Later in the 1950s, the L. Spallanzani Hospital was added. The designing of the C. Forlanini Institute, opened on 1 December 1934, was entrusted to the Ufficio Costruzioni Sanatoriali of I.N.F.P.S. and the sanatorium, constructed in reinforced concrete and masonry, was immediately seen as avant-garde for its time. In 2008, the slow closing down of Forlanini began, transformed over time into a hospital structure, and presently in a state of total abandon and neglect. This paper is the result of a detailed analysis of the construction history of the sanatorium, with a view to an eventual redevelopment and enhancement of the complex