Reitgjerdet (Reitgjerdets Pleiestiftelse for Spedalske) was a leprosy hospital in Trondheim, Norway.

The Norwegian parliament allocated money for the institution in 1854. It opened in 1861, with beds for 250 patients. The building was designed by architects Heinrich Ernst Schirmer and Wilhelm von Hanno. A separate department for mentally ill people with leprosy was added in 1880.

In 1914, with leprosy on the decline in Norway, the Norwegian government decreed that Reitgjerdet should be closed when the remaining patients had been transferred elsewhere. It closed in 1920, with some of the last patients being transferred to the Pleiestiftelsen for spedalske Nr. 1 in Bergen.

The building was then converted into a criminal asylum, which opened in 1923 and closed in 1987. Today, it is part of the Brøset settlement, an experimental carbon-neutral community under development by the Norwegian government.

Sources:

Löfström, Erica, and Øyvind Thomassen. ‘Visualizing the Wings of History: Brøset – a Laboratory for Societal Change: the New and Old Challenge of (Re-)Designing the (Built) Environment’. Online.

http://digitalarkivet.uib.no/lepra-eng/Reitgjerdet.htm

http://www.kulturminnesok.no/Lokaliteter/Soer-Troendelag/Trondheim/St-Olavs-hospital-Broeset-Tidl.-Reitgjerdet