The volume aims to open a window on the history and future of the city of Salsomaggiore Terme starting from a critical rereading of the Lorenzo Berzieri Establishment, an architectural organism that is a symbol of the city, now involved in a phase of rethinking, reuse, and enhancement. Organized in three sections, the work delves into the "time," "form," and "place" of the cultural sphere of reference: the issue of the spa Deco, the Italian architecture of spa realities, and the search for the new soul of the city. What emerges is a historical, diachronic, profound reading that elects the context as an experimental laboratory for the identification of a new identity of the spa city interpreted as a primary example of a healthy entity of culture, health and leisure. The work elects itself as a strategic opportunity to activate a critical rethinking, in a proactive and synergistic key, of the heart of the city and its recent projects, in a polycentric and multiscalar logic, analyzing ideas and opportunities that the cathedral of thermal health suggests, turning in a synergistic form the gaze to the past and present of the city, identifying a future narrative. Beginning with a rereading of its architectural, artistic and semantic characters, the contributions pay homage to the Lorenzo Berzieri Spa as an undisputed urban protagonist, which since 1923 has been the theater and setting for the loisir, customs, and moods of the eras that have succeeded one another over time. The resulting outcome is an articulate and intense contribution, aimed at providing an opportunity for scholars and connoisseurs of the subject to generate an organic and comprehensive vision of the history, characters and possible developments of the urban organism as a reliable paradigm of the fate of other heritages and thermal districts characterized by similar characteristics and identical wills of redemption.

Contributions by: Alessandra Belluomini Pucci, Maurizia Bonatti Bacchini, Filippo Bricolo, Federico Bucci, Chiara Caruso, Massimiliano Celani, Giovanna D'Amia, Francesca Daprà, Emilio Faroldi, Marika Fior, Paolo Galuzzi, Michele Guerra, Dominique Jarrassé, Andrea Maglio, Silvia Malcovati, Sara Martin, Maria Maugeri, Pierluigi Panza, Mario Pisani, Renzo Riboldazzi, Francesco Varni, Maria Pilar Vettori.