The project proposes a new de-medicalised typology of a care centre for patients with dementia in the centre of Florence. The care centre evokes a fictional reality for residents and visitors, allowing those with dementia to live freely in a safe controlled environment. This nostalgic fiction will be upheld by the carers, operating reconfigured stage machinery like a behind-the-scenes crew, casting patients as ‘actors’. The fiction revolves around this metaphor of theatre: the architecture employs a language of stage sets and the interface between the stage (fictional settings for residents) and backstage (the spaces for staff to control the fiction). The fictional setting that the building provides embeds motifs of Ovid’s metamorphoses as a subliminal layer to the theatrical fiction, subconsciously improving a resident’s ability to navigate the building. Muscle memory is enforced through sensory engagement in the architecture: walls and floors are designed for tactility and sound, enabling spaces to be memorised through the skin. In this sense, the building becomes a sensory memory palace.