quently in the historic centre of Naples; in monasteries and convents, where it acts as a cloister, the courtyard is symbolically identified with a terrestrial paradise, and represents the image of the eternal paradise of which monastic life was supposed to be a sort of foretaste. The courtyard, preserving the memory of the walled gardens that used to be a feature – and still are – of the monastic complexes of the city, is structured into three variations in this project: an orange orchard as in the cloister linked to the church of Regina Vecchia; a medical garden (a garden which referred to medicinal plants or the medical remedies obtained from them), dominated by the majestic camphor tree, which had already existed in the medical garden of the Incurabili hospital; lastly, with a clear reference to the monastic tradition, there is a garden with the presence of water: a well or a cistern, an allegory of Christ as the source of life, from which flowed four water basins or four paths arranged as a cross, symbolising the four rivers of the world mentioned in the first book of the Bible. Infrastructure The new building, situated between the new cardo and Via del Sole, modifies the edge of the block, restoring the ancient perimeter, and represents the functional heart of the project. It contains a series of cultural activities as well as teaching spaces for the university. Each of the floors of the building, designed to be ‘suspended’ continuous spaces – directly accessible from the courtyards made from within the volume of the building, whose size, proportions and geometry are directly related to the original blocks of the historic centre – extends southwards, occupying the entire width of the block.
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