La Casa Viola

"I am a home. They built me here at the crossroads of arrivals and departures. They filled my rooms with broken hearts. No one knows I exist, I am a secret refuge. But the courage that pulses in me now I want to tell". This is the Purple House speaking, a Refuge House for women victims of gender-based or domestic violence, occurring within the family or household. The shelter welcomes women and children who have arrived through Anti-Violence Centres and guarantees them secrecy of location to ensure their protection. It enhances the relational resources between women so that from these can spring the desire to be reborn. The Purple House will never show the faces of its guests, it will protect them. But it will show the hand gestures, the embraces, the waiting. And it will show its rooms not fully furnished, its suitcases not fully unpacked, its cupboards partly empty. It is a home that he knows he will soon have to let go of in order to welcome again.