HISTORY AND DESTINY OF ITALIAN SANATORIA. THE HERITAGE IN ABRUZZO

The Italian heritage of sanatorium architecture is the result of the development of a wide social programme, which began after the unification of the country and found its greatest growth in the 1930s. The European positivist culture pursued full awareness and mature reflections on the issues concerning living conditions in rapidly changing societies that progressively focused on healthcare. Health as a right for all and the new medical advancements implied significant changes in the equipment of health facilities useful to contain the endemic pathology of tuberculosis. Sanatoria and hospitals, for treatment, dispensaries, marine hospices, heliotherapy colonies, for prophylaxis, were a hard and meaningful evidence of a “modern architecture” which, through the fruitful collaboration between doctors and technicians, found appropriate solutions to specific needs and updated experimentations and new spatial, technical and formal el- ements. This heritage, spread throughout the nation, was the subject of a quick and perhaps hurried judgment of functional inadequacy, which decreed progressive, and prevalent decay process, as buildings located in Abruzzo region proved. Starting from the reconstruction of events of the national sanatorium programme, the essay aims to describe the history of this regional heritage, which, together with the colonies, is a significant sign of modern architecture in Abruzzo, or rather of its modernist variations. The essay also aims to outline strategic guidelines that could be useful to foster a regenerative and resilient restoration project with a view to active conservation