Dolci was inspired by the work of the Catholic priest Don Zeno Saltini who had opened an orphanage for 3,000 abandoned children after World War II. It was housed in a former concentration camp at Fossoli near Modena in Emilia Romagna, and was called Nomadelfia: a place where fraternity is law. In 1950 Dolci quit his very promising architecture and engineering studies in Switzerland at the age of twenty-five, gave up his middle class standard of living and went to work with the poor and unfortunate. Dolci set up a similar commune called Ceffarello.
