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Lago Di Garda is much quieter and less star-studded than the better-known Italian lakes of Como and Maggiore. And reaching Riva, as the locals call it—the town at Garda’s northernmost tip—requires some real grit and gall from the driver’s seat. The winding cliffside road leading there, which darts in and out of tunnels, some single-laned, is certainly not for the faint-hearted. But the destination’s crystal-clear water, warm if breezy microclimate, and Alpine backdrop make the journey well worthwhile. Adding to its mystique: the 17,000-person town in the province of Trentino feels suspended between cultures. The area had previously been a part of Austria-Hungary, until 1919, when it was annexed by Italy. Walking through the streets, one can hear German seemingly as often as Italian.

This idyllic setting made Riva del Garda a prime location, at the turn of the 20th century, for the construction of a large public hospital that promised patients a secluded and carefree recovery. Inaugurated in 1902, and situated on a hill overlooking the city, the Ospedale-Ricovero served that purpose until, ultimately, the same relative remoteness, exacerbated by changes in approach to patient care, pushed the institution into a state of disuse. In 2009, a partnership formed between Euro Project Engineering Consulting and the Milan-based Cino Zucchi Architetti (CZA) beat David Chipperfield Architects and others in an international competition to reenvision the hospital campus as an assisted-living facility, “in such a way that the structures truly become residences, places of life, therefore pleasant and serene,” as the brief put it.

The former hospital comprised four parallel linear buildings, each dedicated to a different medical field and connected by a long, glazed corridor that bisected them. CZA’s scheme proposed razing two of the dilapidated structures and using the remnants of a third as the spring point for new construction. (The fourth building, still extant, now serves as a high school.) In realized form, the assisted-living facility—called the Welcoming Citadel—features a polygonal plan that is reminiscent of a medieval fortress’s, with its sole point of inflection marking the entrance, and a multilevel, starburst-shaped courtyard at its core. “There is a bit of a Colin Rowe Collage City attitude, or even of Camillo Sitte,” says principal Cino Zucchi. “It borrows from this idea that, in the old cities, open spaces were carved out of a solid mass.”

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A frame (1) wraps the Citadel, which incorporates a facade from the old hospital (2). Photos © Davide Galli, click to enlarge.

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A ring of circulation wanders throughout the building, leaving very few dead ends but many pockets of space for any of the 60 elderly residents, plus 20 more who join only for daytime activities, to socialize. On the ground floor, there are offices for on-site attendants and various amenities, including a chapel. “The idea was to, as much as we could, avoid looking like a hospital, even though some of the same services are offered here,” Zucchi says. “We wanted to make convivial spaces.” This was not an easy balance to strike, considering that about a third of the inhabitants suffer from dementia and need close monitoring, or with the many prescriptive building codes (importantly intended to safeguard residents) that can stifle architectural experimentation. Many of the interiors are muted, with simple details. Despite this, intimate courtyards planted with olives and rosemary, expansive views from individual rooms and the hallways, and a reception area with punched skylights and sinuous furniture, confer a special character.

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The interiors are muted and simple (3) but a reception area (4) is skylit and includes sinuous furniture. Photo © Davide Galli

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Outside, the Citadel is wrapped in a highly articulated lattice, clad in ceramic panels, with a cornice and long stringcourses that both emphasize horizontality and create sharp acute corners. A staccato arrangement of slender and thick columns creates orthogonal frames that are either filled with tricolor paste-dyed plaster panels and windows, or are left open to form loggias. Rigor clearly undergirds this layered and unpretentious composition. “Stately,” Zucchi rightly calls it, suggesting a relationship with the Neoclassical language of the former hospital partially incorporated into the new building. But it also recalls the many limonaie—simple post-and-beam structures for cultivating lemons—that uniquely dot Garda’s lakefront.

The inner courtyard seemingly exists in a different universe, one that the architect likens to “a picturesque village.” Here skylight enclosures rise into abstract pyramidal volumes that double as outdoor seating, and raised planters await springtime landscaping. The space is almost entirely enclosed by a low-slung roof that rises and falls, choreographed in tandem with the Alps in the distance. To the south, a terrace offers elevated views of Garda. Many of the courtyard’s architectonic elements playfully distort scale—square apertures of varying sizes stipple the faceted inner walls, which have been lined with planks of composite lumber in an abstract, coursed pattern. The windows also serve to disguise the uppermost attic story, which houses mechanical equipment.

The inner courtyard features an upper level that overlooks intimate spaces. Photo © Davide Galli

Like the Roman god Janus, often depicted with visages facing two different directions, the Citadel is fixed in a state of duality. The exterior no doubt corresponds to the stony materiality of Riva’s Italianate city center, while the smoother ligneous court carved out of the building mass subtly nods to the timber construction typical of Mitteleuropa farther north but still present in the area. But the building also seems to be a tacit acknowledgement of Zucchi’s longstanding fascination with the facade frame—a signature of sorts explored in many of his firm’s projects—while simultaneously trying to break from it. Or can it be read as an architectural representation of aging and cognitive decline, when a person’s being slowly fades from within, leaving something hollow inside a shell? Perhaps the Citadel is all these things.

The roofline rises and falls like the Alps in the distance. Photo © Davide Galli

As I stand in the center of the courtyard wondering, still in awe of the setting, I hear the sound of a camera shutter. Zucchi waves from inside a window, then closes it. Moments later, another opens a few feet away. A game of “Where’s Cino?” unfolds in this tranquil inner sanctum, revealing the architect’s obsessive focus on documenting the qualities of his work—and perhaps some of his eccentricities too. (His office in Milan abounds in assorted trinkets and objects that he has collected over the years, from drafting tools to anatomical models.) “I want to capture the moments,” he quips, later acknowledging the spontaneous quality of his photographs. Those “moments”—captivating scenes, quirky details, extraordinary sight lines—are exactly what make the Citadel, caught in an identity crisis, so intriguing.

There is also an opportunity, says Franco Benuzzi, who leads the foundation that manages the Welcoming Citadel, to expand the hospital campus further and build more housing to accommodate residents with an even greater range of needs. The idea is still nascent but equally ripe with potential—and appeal. Who wouldn’t want to settle in this little Alpine oasis? There’s little reason to leave.

Click plans to enlarge