THE CITY OF THE MAD AND THE CITY OF THE DEAD
From the beginning of the second half of the fifteenth century onwards, the idea of the impending presence of death dominates. The “End of Times” takes the form of a plague and wars, but at the end of the century this anxiety is transformed, death and its seriousness are replaced by a mockery of madness. “Madness is the approach of death,” Foucault clarifies, but madness is also her defeated presence, as constant clues about the already reigning death reign only indicate that this goal is difficult to achieve. In fact, "the head that will be the skull is already empty." On the other hand, we find in the laughter of a madman only that he laughs looking at the smile of death. This is the connection between death and madness, which manifests itself in different forms. When, on the threshold of the nineteenth century, people began to think that the soul could become so sick that it would need a doctor, psychiatry was born, and along with it the medical treatment of the soul. In the era of general changes, when the attitude not only towards mental illnesses, but also to the places designated by them, changed, there were radical changes in the urban structures of the main cities of Italy, in the structure of which in the second half of the 19th century "cities of the dead" were formed. Nevertheless, the "city of the dead" and the "city of the crazy", although both of these concepts are included in the concept of a "closed city", are two objectively different realities that are comparable only in strictly philosophical terms: physical death and social.