Museo di Storia della Psichiatria

The Museum of the History of Psychiatry in Reggio Emilia occupies the former Padiglione Lombroso of the San Lazzaro hospital. Preserved rooms, objects and inscriptions left by former patients document how psychiatric care and institutional life changed over time.

Why it matters

The pavilion opened as a museum on 30 September 2012. Designed by engineer Angelo Spallanzani in 1891, it was first called the Casino Galloni after San Lazzaro's first director, Antonio Galloni. Its preserved fabric and collections offer a material record of the hospital's history and of the people who lived there.

What to notice

Exhibits include cells, restraint devices, electroconvulsive apparatus and other historical treatments. Graffiti and inscriptions on the walls preserve traces left by patients. The building itself is part of the collection: its rooms, colours and fittings help place the objects within the history of institutional psychiatric care.

The painter Antonio Ligabue was a patient at San Lazzaro from 2 March 1945 to 6 December 1948. His story connects the hospital's institutional history with the artistic life of Reggio Emilia.

Context and history

In 1910, the pavilion became the Sezione Lombroso, named for criminologist Cesare Lombroso. It followed a 1904 law requiring isolation sections for people with criminal convictions who were considered mentally ill; the section held around seventy people and, from 1923, also prisoners serving short sentences.

After San Lazzaro's hospital functions wound down, the pavilion was abandoned from 1972. The civic museums later restored and preserved it as a museum. The wider San Lazzaro complex has since been partly converted to public park, civic and university uses.