This is a podcast on asylums in Italy in the 20th century. This is the story of those who were called «asylum leftovers.» In 1978, Franco Basaglia, a former psychiatrist and parliamentarian of the Christian Democracy, realized a law that formerly closed those structures. Nevertheless, asylums remained open until the early 2000s, one of which, the biggest in Europe, was Rome's Santa Maria della Pietà. With the help of a famous Roman psychiatrist, a former nurse at the asylum of Santa Maria della Pietà, and a patient interned in the building from the early 4o's to the early '90s; we try to unravel life inside a place where people felt forgotten and abandoned for decades.

Leonardo Pini