The small hospital on Tiberina Island, wedged between the city's Jewish Ghetto and its Trastevere neighbourhood, houses a state-of-the-art cancer treatment centre. "When a cancer patient receives the diagnosis of their illness, it's a genuine existential earthquake," Vincenzo Valentini, the 73-year-old head of the hospital's oncology centre and coordinator of the project, told AFP.
Offering art to patients during their treatment is a way of trying to rebuild a "desire for life", said Valentini. "Because art expresses life and so it means bringing life into places where people are afraid of losing it," he said. Incorporating art into medical care "is not about sugarcoating care but is profoundly therapeutic".
