Parco e Roseto di San Giovanni

San Giovanni Park surrounds the buildings of Trieste's former provincial psychiatric hospital. Its rose collections add a horticultural layer to a landscape closely associated with Franco Basaglia and the transformation of psychiatric institutions.

Why it matters

The hospital opened in 1908. In the 1970s Basaglia and his collaborators made it a centre of reform, challenging confinement and changing the relationship between the institution and the city. The park's later public character belongs to that history of opening the grounds beyond their former boundaries.

What to notice

The rose garden brings together old garden roses, botanical species and modern cultivars across the sloping site. A collection associated with the Liberty era recalls the period in which the hospital was built, using symmetrical beds and climbing roses. Oaks, terraces and stairways connect the planted areas with the surviving hospital architecture.

Context and history

Inaugurated in 2009, the rose garden was designed by Vladimir Vremec and created by the San Pantaleone agricultural cooperative with regional support. Its distributed layout respected the hospital complex's earlier plan. This reuse places botanical diversity and the memory of institutional change within the same landscape.