San Servolo, a rediscovered island

The Island of San Servolo, characterized by a vast architectural complex and a beautiful park, was a monastic seat for a millennium and later a hospital for the mentally ill until the psychiatry reform led to the closure of the hospital in 1978

The Province of Venice, now the Metropolitan City of Venice, has retained ownership of the island, starting from 1995 its architectural recovery, preserving and enhancing it through its in-house company San Servolo s.r.l.

The eighteenth-century church dedicated to San Servilio, an Istrian martyr of the third century, characterized by the presence of two bell towers. The restoration works mainly concerned the external parts of the building and were completed in early 2004

The so-called "Austrian wing" was built in the last period of the Habsburg domination, between 1863 and 1867. It is the most recent of the buildings that make up the "monumental core". After the restoration work, eight large rooms were created for congress and didactic activities

On the island there are two wells, one outside the church, built in 1761, and the second probably from the 19th century in a courtyard of the "monumental core"

Adjacent to the main entrance, the room of the old apothecary, with the original walnut shelves and the splendid collection of eighteenth-century vases, is part of the museum itinerary

The compartment from which you enter the historical library, where the original furniture is still placed, including the large wooden card file cabinet that contained the time cards of all the workers present on the island

The library on the first floor of the former medical direction contains more than eight thousand volumes. The premises where it is housed, dating back to the early nineteenth century, have been the subject of radical conservative restoration interventions that have affected both the building structures and the furnishings

The vast building that stands transversely in the middle of the island was built in the early twentieth century as a pavilion for patients. Today it is part of San Servolo's residential center, which includes 173 rooms

The buildings for ergotherapy (occupational therapy) were probably built in the 1930s. They housed the mechanical, blacksmith and carpentry workshops where the patients worked. Currently this site is used for some activities of the Academy of Fine Arts of Venice

This building, located in a secluded position at the southern end of the island, housed the mortuary cell of the psychiatric hospital

The anatomical room as it appeared in the early twentieth century. A reconstruction of it, with the original autopsy table, is now part of the museum itinerary