Sacred spaces in hospitals – chapels or sacred gardens, as places of peace and tranquility, address spiritual needs of the patients and their families. The paper examines the elements creating the phenomenon of sacrum in the composition of the historical Stummer`s hospital in Topoľčany. Today the historical hospital complex is not used for its former functions and the question is how to preserve the sacred phenomena in the context of its future new uses.

Parks and gardens of psychiatric hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are a particular example of garden design art and testify to the role of designed landscape in therapy. Along with the evolution of psychiatry within the last 100 years, institutions for neurotic and mental patients have evolved too. Besides being adapted for contemporary purposes, hospital gardens have also become sites of commemoration of the victims of Nazi euthanasia of psychiatric patients, perpetrated during the Second World War. This article describes selected Aktion T4 memorials in their park and garden landscape context.