Ophelia Project

The Ophelia Project by Giuseppe Quaroni and Marcello Piacentini refers to an innovative mental health hospital built in Potenza, Basilicata (Italy), in the 1910s. It was built in an area, Santa Maria, whose development over time has been greatly conditioned by this project. Nowadays this area is mainly made up of three or four-storey buildings with wide streets in between. The decision to build a new provincial institution for mental health in Potenza dates back to the early twentieth century. The Provincial Deputation of Basilicata wanted to reduce the expenses paid by municipalities to send the mentally ill to Aversa Psychiatric Hospital, which was in another region. The Province of Potenza spent between 80,000 and 100,000 lire a year for the treatment of the mentally ill in the Royal psychiatric hospitals. By spending just a little more than that, the Province would have built a mental institution and would have taken care of local patients. Moreover, there was a "humane" reason behind this idea: patients' rehabilitation had proved to be very problematic in large mental health institutions, where the care was usually poor due to the high number of patients. In a local smaller mental hospital, the odds that the ill would get better were higher. In 1905 a competition was announced. The prize of 600 lire was given to Giuseppe Quaroni and Marcello Piacentini for the Ophelia project. Quaroni, an engineer, and Piacentini, an architect, were both from Rome and they named their project after the Hamlet character, Ophelia, who goes mad and drowns herself in Shakespeare's tragedy ("O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye. By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight..." in act IV, scene V). The estimated outlay for the project was of 1,100,000 lire that had to be spent to build the main wards within five years. In 1907 the foundation stone was laid, but the works only began in 1910.