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Erasmus page [ita eng deu]
THE BUILDING - prof. Marco Rossi - translation: Alice Muscat
The building where now one finds Como's Conservatory of Music was really and truly, originally, a hospital, intended to cure the sick and not to assist orphans and their musical and educational formation. It was built in the second half of the fifteenth century, when it was decided to combine the numerous small hospitals into one Major Hospital.
The new hospital became very functionable since it resided in the building of St.Anne's Hospital of the poor, placed just outside the walls of the city, close to the old village of 'Porta Nuova', now Via Cadorna. Initially it presented a map in the shape of a "T", with three wings as infirmaries - big halls intended to recover the ill - and two small churches.
A new infirmary was added at the end of the eighteenth century: as a result of the qualitative and quantitative growth of the hospital assistance required, a new phase of constructing new structures on every wing of the building started; a map of 1789 shows us the the new shape a cross of the hospital.
Once more during the nineteenth century [see Conservatory in 1907] many changes in the construction took place, works of maintenance and small additions necessary for the complex functioning of the institute, the construction of a new church which also takes place in this period, where now one finds the "auditorium".
The old hospital was active up to the beginning of our century, when it was abbandoned following the inauguration of the new hospital of Camerlata; from that moment onwards the building became firemen's barracks up to 1960. Between 1971 and 1973 the Commune of Como decided to start works on the entire building to stop it from going further into ruin since, in the meantime many parts of the building were collapsing. At the same time hypoteses as to what the use of the new building should be were being directed towards premises for musical education and formation, until, in 1982, there was an agreement with the Conservatory Giuseppe Verdi in Milan for the opening of a separate branch in Como. In 1996 Como's Conservatory gained it's autonomy from the one in Milan.
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