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The Welcoming Citadel: How a Former Hospital Became a Care Community

On a former hospital campus in Riva del Garda, Cino Zucchi Architetti organized a residential-care community around a planted courtyard and a gridded ceramic façade.

By ThatPainter Team Published
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The Welcoming Citadel is a residential-care community in Riva del Garda, Italy, created on the site of the town’s former civil hospital. Designed by Cino Zucchi Architetti, it replaces the image of a care institution set apart from everyday life with a polygonal complex organized around a planted courtyard and connected to the surrounding town. The architect dates the built project from 2009 to 2024; Architectural Record reports completion in September 2024.

How did Cino Zucchi turn the former hospital into a care community?

The project reuses the former civil hospital campus in Riva del Garda, at the northern end of Lake Garda in Trentino, as the setting for a new residential-care community. The hospital had been a major center for healthcare and rehabilitation, but changing medical needs led to its gradual abandonment. A competition called for redevelopment of the former hospital and the creation of a modern nursing home.

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The result is not simply a new care building on an old site. Its central design idea is to make the facility feel connected to its town and to one another: a polygonal plan wraps around a planted, multi-level courtyard, while rooms, corridors and communal spaces follow a circulation ring around the gardens. The architects describe this as a departure from the isolation often associated with health facilities. The project’s name, Cittadella dell’Accoglienza, translates as “Welcoming Citadel.”

The project credits Cino Zucchi Architetti, Euro Project Engineering Consulting and engineer Arturo Busetto. APSP “Città di Riva” is the client. The architect’s project account presents the building as a response to the needs of vulnerable residents, with quality of life, efficiency and function all part of the brief.

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What makes the courtyard the center of the design?

The courtyard is the organizing center of the complex, not a leftover open space. The internal circulation ring brings residents and visitors past gardens and shared areas, while views from rooms and corridors keep the planted setting in view. This arrangement gives the building a recognizable internal orientation: instead of every route being defined only by corridors, the courtyard offers a common visual reference and a place around which daily movement can gather.

The architect describes olive trees and rosemary in the planted areas, and skylights in the lobby. Pyramid-shaped skylights also serve as outdoor seating beside raised flower beds. These elements combine practical functions with a more domestic character: the skylights bring light into the interior, while their form and the adjacent beds make parts of the courtyard usable as places to pause.

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Cino Zucchi Architetti characterizes the courtyard as intimate and village-like. That is a design intention, not evidence about how residents experience the building in daily use. Still, the spatial strategy is clear: shared garden views, sheltered routes and places to sit are integrated into the circulation system rather than being treated as decoration separate from it. In a residential-care setting, this makes the relationship between movement, outlook and communal space a central part of the architectural proposition.

How does the exterior connect the new building to Riva del Garda?

The exterior is structured by a grid clad in ceramic panels. Slender and larger columns alternate with windows and open loggias, giving the façade a repeated rhythm rather than presenting it as a blank institutional wall. The architects say the grid responds to the former hospital’s neoclassical arrangement and recalls the region’s traditional limonaie, or lemon houses.

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That reference works at more than one scale. The former hospital supplies a local historical precedent, while the lemon houses connect the building to a regional building type. The new complex does not copy either one literally; instead, its gridded façade translates those references into a contemporary ceramic-panel exterior. The project’s exterior and interior therefore use different material languages: a ceramic grid toward the town, and composite-wood slats on the walls of the inner courtyard.

The courtyard walls have irregular openings, and the roofline is intended to echo the mountain silhouette. Together, these choices give the inner face of the complex a different character from its more ordered exterior. The architects describe the contrast as one between an exterior that blends with Riva del Garda’s historic center and a more intimate courtyard that evokes a small village. This distinction is useful for understanding the project: the building addresses the town at its perimeter, then offers a more sheltered environment within.

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How many residents and guests does the facility accommodate?

The project sources describe capacity in different terms, so the figures should not be combined into a single total. Cino Zucchi Architetti describes 60 residents arranged in three clusters of 20, plus 20 daily guests. Euro Project Engineering Consulting separately lists 120 beds. A bed count, the number of resident places described by the architect and daily guest capacity are not interchangeable measures.

The three-cluster arrangement gives the residential program a smaller internal scale. One of the clusters is specially equipped for people with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the architect. This is a feature of the stated care program; the source does not provide further detail about the equipment or how the cluster is operated.

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The architect’s figures also distinguish overnight residential care from daytime attendance. The 20 daily guests are a separate group in the description, not an additional count of residents. Euro Project’s 120-bed figure should likewise be reported as that consultant’s stated capacity rather than used to revise the architect’s description. The available records do not explain the difference in scope or counting methods.

When was the project designed and completed?

The sources record several milestones, reflecting a long project rather than one simple construction date. Cino Zucchi Architetti dates the built project 2009–2024. Architectural Record reports that the facility was completed in September 2024. Euro Project lists design in 2011 and execution in 2019, and its page describes the project as in testing and completion.

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These dates should be read as differently scoped project records, not as evidence of separate facilities. The later completion date reported by Architectural Record is consistent with the architect’s broader 2009–2024 project period. The engineering consultant’s 2019 execution date is a milestone in its account, which also preserves a testing/completion status.

The chronology illustrates how redevelopment of a former hospital can extend across planning, design and delivery phases. It does not, by itself, establish when every part of the complex was built or opened. Nor do the cited project pages establish current occupancy or present-day operational status.

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What are the project’s reported area and cost?

Euro Project gives the area as 6,952 square metres and the cost as €9,265,461.24. Architectural Record lists 74,830 square feet and a cost of $10.3 million. The two area figures are effectively equivalent after unit conversion, but the cost figures are reported in different currencies and should remain attributed to their respective sources.

Neither cost figure should be treated as a direct currency conversion of the other without more information about reporting context, timing and what each amount includes. They are source-reported project figures, not a like-for-like comparison of budgets. Euro Project’s project page provides its area and euro figure; Architectural Record’s feature provides the square-foot and US-dollar figures.

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What does the project say about sustainability?

Cino Zucchi Architetti reports that the project achieved LEED Gold certification. The firm frames the environmental approach around energy efficiency and multidisciplinary strategies. That certification claim is attributable to the architect’s project page; the available project information does not specify energy-use results, individual measures, or a quantified performance comparison.

It is therefore more accurate to treat LEED Gold as a reported certification than to infer particular outcomes from it. The project’s design description does identify planted spaces and a courtyard as key architectural features, but the sources do not establish that those features alone account for the certification or quantify their environmental effect.

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What is the architectural idea behind the Welcoming Citadel?

The project’s defining move is to organize care around an internal landscape while retaining a relationship to the town outside. The courtyard gives the building a shared center; the ring of circulation, gardens and communal rooms ties that center into everyday routes. The ceramic grid and its local references address the building’s external context, while slatted courtyard walls and sheltered places to sit shape a more intimate interior world.

Cino Zucchi Architetti states that “The citadel is not just a place of care but an inclusive space that enhances both the well-being of its guests and its relationship with the city.” That sentence expresses the firm’s ambition, rather than a verified measure of resident outcomes. As an architectural proposition, the Welcoming Citadel makes the ambition legible through its layout: a former hospital campus becomes a residential-care setting designed around shared space, planted outlooks and a deliberate connection to Riva del Garda.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the Welcoming Citadel located?

It is in Riva del Garda, in Trentino, at the northern end of Lake Garda in Italy. The project occupies the site of the town’s former civil hospital.

What does Cittadella dell’Accoglienza mean in English?

The project name is rendered in English as “Welcoming Citadel.” It refers to the residential-care community created on the former hospital campus.

Who was the general contractor for the project?

Architectural Record identifies Costruzioni Dallapè as the general contractor. The architect’s project credits also name Euro Project Engineering Consulting and engineer Arturo Busetto.

Does the project have a confirmed current occupancy figure?

The cited sources describe planned or stated capacity, not a verified current resident count. They do not establish present-day occupancy or operating status.

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