Crumbling: A rusting bed stands in the middle of one of the abandoned wards inside the Berlin hospital that treated Adolf Hitler after he was shot in battle in 1916.

Nursing a Nazi: Adolf Hitler was admitted to a ward while he recovered from a thigh wound he sustained during the Battle of the Somme.

An Empty Corridor: Beelitz Heilstatten is a 60-building complex which opened in 1902 to deal with a growing tuberculosis problem in the German capital.

A Derelict Bath: The hospital was built in 1898 after Berlin's public health authorities found themselves facing a tuberculosis epidemic.

Crumbling Past: One of the large communal halls is still bedecked with Soviet signs in this image taken by photographer Rosella Ottaviano.

Decaying: In its prime, the hospital comprised a network of treatment rooms which functioned as a small village.

Hollywood Legacy: The Oscar-winning 2002 film The Pianist was shot in the hospital as was the 2008 film Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise.

What For The Future? Several attempts have been made to privatize and restore Beelitz Heilstatten since it closed, but none have been successful.

Disturbing: Italian photographer Rosella Ottaviano said she could "still sense the pain in the building" as she through its long corridors.

Derelict: The sanitorium eventually closed after the German reunification in 1990 and it has remained abandoned ever since.

Left To Rot: The triumphant Soviet military took over the 600-bed sanitorium following the end of the Second World War and closed after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Painting a Thousand Words: An empty corridor in the abandoned hospital, which has been documented by photographer Rosella Ottaviano, 49, from Emilia-Romagna, Italy.

Time Does It's Work: The once-majestic ceiling of a treatment room which has now been daubed with graffiti after being abandoned.

Vast: The main building of the complex which once functioned as a small village with a butcher's shop, bakery, gymnasium, restaurant and post office.

Battle Wounds: Adolf Hitler pictured center with his fellow dispatch runners in 1916, the year he was injured during the Battle of the Somme. The treatment Hitler received at the Beelitz Sanitorium aided his rise to Nazi dictator some 20 years later.