Orto delle Meraviglie Historical Timeline

Origins

The site itself began around 1530 as a hospice for reformed sex workers, known as the Convertite (the "converted"), and grew into a formal convent by 1543, with its own church built roughly a decade later. Within twenty years of its founding, taking the veil at the Convertite had become mandatory for the women who entered.

Turning points

Napoleon suppressed the convent in 1806, converting it into a military prison; Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria later transformed it specifically into a women's prison in 1837, and by 1859 the resident nuns had been given the formal task of running it -- a role tied to this site for decades afterward.

Influential people

In 1994, the cooperative Rio Terà dei Pensieri launched its first project here: the Orto delle Meraviglie, an organic garden cultivated by the prison's own inmates, still managed today under Vania Carlot.

Cultural evolution

Over six thousand square meters of the former convent grounds are now farmed using organic methods, producing around forty varieties of fruit, vegetables, flowers, and wild herbs -- transforming a site defined for centuries by confinement into one centered on cultivation and reintegration.

Present-day significance

Today, the Casa di Reclusione Femminile remains one of only five women's prisons in Italy, and the garden's produce is sold weekly at a stand on Fondamenta del Carcere, staffed by the same women who grow it -- one of the very few points of direct contact between the prison and the wider city.