The center is housed in a building dating from the early eighteenth century, Palazzo Capponi, close to Piazza Santissima Annunziata. The townhouse was designed by the Roman architect Carlo Fontana, who collaborated with Bernini on Palazzo Montecitorio. The Center, located on the ground floor, covers a large area of 1.200 sqft divided in waiting room (fig. 2), examination rooms and surgical theater. The waiting room is a very unusual setting because entirely frescoed by a Florentine painter of the early eighteenth century, Giovanni Ferretti.
The operating theater is located in a sort of technological box suspended inside the original structure without even touching the walls of the building: the gap between the sides of the box and its historic container is used to house the conduits of the power, water and air-conditioning systems.
The operating theater is painted by a contemporary painter, Roberto Barni (fig. 4). The purpose of the furnishings and frescoes is to create an atmosphere of tranquility and well-being and therefore reduce the need for tranquilizers and hypnotics: it is only very recently that the advantages of matching hospital care with art have become apparent.
Next to the operating theater there is a large area divided into four sections by wooden partitions and drapes.
These are used by patients while waiting for their operation and as recovery rooms.
The operating theater is also flanked by rooms used by the surgeons to prepare and to scrub and for the sterilization and storage of instruments, as well as a changing room, an office for compiling operation reports and clinical records, a kitchen, etc.