The city walls are clearly dividing two parts of the city, different both in terms of morphology and of population. The historical centre, fixed in its historical aspect and the system of Via Pistoiese, characterised by small factory bulding and a more active citizenship. The Convent of San Niccolò is right between those two system and can be the real point of convercence of those realities. The actual situation is emphasized in the first scheme, where the phisical boundaries are creating a real barrier between the two realities. In particular, each plot is like an island, not relating to what happens outside neither one with the other. The convents were born to be autosufficient and the walls are dividing them from the rest of the city. The capability of the city of being a “sponge” is highlighted in the second: thanks to the reopening of the two roads, the creation of a community orchard in the
former San Niccolò one, and the clearing of some demolished building, this part of the city can really become permeable.

Thanks to Via Duccio and Via del Tignoso, the orchard can be accessed in an autonomous way from the convent, and the entrance itself can be a playground for children and a urban connection between the two parts of the cities. One of the abandoned building on the other side of the wall is reused as a marketplace, where food and products from the orchards can be sold. The orchard is thought in a formal way, relating to its original formal division and to the typical Italian and French historical garden. Perspective axis, symmetry and clean divisions are the main concepts of its design, while the real change in its phisical aspect is given by the orticolture proposed. What in the past has always been a formal way of organizing a garden, now becomes a tool for the production, where the single division are an articulated synergic orchard full of colours and different plantations